'Terrified' Sydney resident misidentified as Bondi gunman
- Published on December 16, 2025 at 10:20
- 3 min read
- By Dene-Hern CHEN, AFP Australia
In the aftermath of the Bondi Beach shooting which left 15 people dead, Australian public broadcaster ABC named one of the shooters as Naveed Akram, citing an anonymous official. A picture supposedly depicting the assailant circulated widely on social media, but it was in fact taken from the Facebook profile of a man with the same name. The misidentified Sydney resident told AFP he was "terrified" for his life after receiving death threats online.
"#BondiBeach this is the guy," reads an X post shared December 14, 2025, featuring an image of a smiling man wearing a Pakistani cricket team jersey.
The post surfaced hours after a father and son duo opened fire on a Jewish festival at Australia's best-known beach on the evening of December 14 (archived link).
The attackers killed 15 people, the oldest of whom was 87. The youngest victim, a 10-year-old girl, died later in a children's hospital.
Forty-two people were hospitalised overnight, including five in a critical condition. Among them are two police officers.
Australian media named the gunmen as Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram.
Police say the 50-year-old father was killed in a shootout with officers, while his 24-year-old son is in a critical condition in hospital, under police guard.
The attack was declared a terrorist incident by New South Wales Premier Chris Minns.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the assailants were driven by "Islamic State ideology" (archived link).
Users in India and the United Kingdom, as well as Spain posted the same picture, falsely claiming it depicts the shooter Naveed Akram.
'Life-threatening issue'
But a reverse image search shows the photo of the man at a cricket match was taken from a Facebook profile named "Sheikh Naveed" -- which belongs to a 30-year-old man living in a northwestern suburb of Sydney also named Naveed Akram.
He told AFP by phone on December 15 that it was his account, and that it was him in the picture shared in 2019 with hashtags including "pakvsaus", "cricket" and "Australia" (archived link).
"Someone is falsely using my picture, which is putting my safety, reputation, and well-being at risk," he said, urging people to stop sharing the image and "correct others if you see this misinformation spreading".
He went on to say he first heard around 9:30 pm on December 14 that he had been falsely identified as the shooter, and that he promptly deleted the messages he got on Facebook.
"I could not even sleep last night," Akram said. "I'm terrified. I could not go outside, like it's a life-threatening issue, so I don't want to risk anything."
He wrote in a post in the early hours of December 15 that the photo "being circulated is NOT the person involved in the Bondi incident" (archived link).
He also pleaded for people to stop spreading the misinformation in a video published by the Pakistan Consulate of Sydney on the same day (archived link).
"I have nothing to do with that incident or with that person," he said, condemning the "terrible" Bondi Beach shooting and asking for people to report accounts that misused his photo.
The post from the consulate also said Consul General Qamar Zaman had spoken to Akram (archived link).
"This act has endangered the life of an innocent Pakistani national," the video's caption reads.
Akram told AFP he asked the Pakistan Consulate to put out the video because relatives in the country's Punjab province were getting phone calls as well.
"It was destroying my image, my family's image," he said. "People started to call them. They were worried, and they told the police over there."
AFP has previously fact-checked false posts circulating in the aftermath of mass shooting events.
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