SYDNEY: An “extreme terror tour” of the Australian forest where a notorious killer buried seven backpackers in the 1990s was Tuesday attacked as “horrendous” and insensitive to the families of victims.
Goulburn Ghost Tours was advertising a small number of nighttime visits to Belanglo State Forest, where Ivan Milat dumped the bodies of two Britons, three Germans and two Australians over 20 years ago.
Milat is serving consecutive life sentences for the murders of the young travelers which terrified Australia in the early 1990s. Their remains were found in Belanglo, 120 kilometers (74 miles) southwest of Sydney.
“You asked for it and we have delivered — Goulburn Ghost Tours extreme terror tour is here,” the company said on its website.
“Come with us to Belanglo where Ivan Milat buried the bodies of his victims! Once you enter Belanglo State Forest you may never come out...”
New South Wales state Premier Mike Baird said he was shocked to learn of the tours which he described as “completely and utterly outrageous.”
“It’s not only in bad taste, it’s just terrible,” he said. “Horrendous.”
Baird said the group would require a permit to operate in the state forest but would be refused permission if they applied.
New South Wales Victims of Crime Assistance League chief executive Robyn Cotterell-Jones acknowledged the fascination with the macabre.
“But from where I sit, caring for the families of people who have been harmed in all sorts of vicious and violent crimes including murder, every time something like this arises it rips the scars open again,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“The idea so soon after his crimes in the Belanglo, and more recent crimes as well, of having people tramping over the sites that are still very special is very concerning to the families.”
Horror at Australian forest tour where backpackers buried
Horror at Australian forest tour where backpackers buried
Bondi Beach shooting suspect conducted firearms training with his father, Australian police say
MELBOURNE, Australia: A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach conducted firearms training in an area of New South Wales state outside of Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.
The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.
The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.
Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs and two homemade Daesh group flags wrapped in blankets.
Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.
The largest IED was found after the gunbattle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to Islamic State,” police said, using another term for the Daesh Group.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.
Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.
The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals on Monday.
