Standing in the rain outside a suburban Sydney railway station, seventeen-year-old Naveed Akram stares into the camera and urges those watching to spread the word of Islam.
“Spread the message that Allah is one wherever you can … whether it be raining, hailing or clear sky,” he said.
Another since-deleted video posted in 2019 by Street Dawah Movement, a Sydney-based Islamic community group, shows him urging two young boys to pray more frequently.
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Authorities are now trying to piece together what happened in the intervening six years that led a teenager volunteering to hand out pamphlets for a non-violent community group to allegedly carry out Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.
Akram, who remains under heavy guard in hospital after being shot by police, was briefly investigated by Australia’s domestic intelligence agency in 2019 for links to individuals connected to Islamic State, but authorities found he did not have extremist tendencies at the time.
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“In the years that followed, that changed,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Tuesday.