James*, 16, screams as a pack of black-clad teenagers drag him to the ground and stomp on his head while an attacker films on his phone in Sydney's Strathfield Park
In another video, the gang forces a different 16-year-old into a toilet block and repeatedly punches him while calling him a "f*****" and a "kafir", or nonbeliever. Blood runs down his face as he begs, "I'll do anything"
A third clip shows a boy in a cropped top lying silent on the grass, his hands shielding his face as he is repeatedly stomped on and called a "gay dog", while one attacker shouts "Dawlatul Islam" — Arabic for Islamic State (IS)
"I'll f***ing shoot you, you little dog," one attacker says, before the victim finally emits a single high-pitched cry, and the video cuts out
The footage is among recordings played in Sydney courts or circulated in chat groups, and obtained by ABC Investigations from court files, victims and members of the public
It documents a surge of violence against gay and bisexual young people in Sydney at the hands of a resurgent IS terrorist network in the two years before the Bondi attack
A two-year ABC investigation into the reawakening of IS can reveal the attackers in the videos were linked to the same terrorist network as Naveed and Sajid Akram, the father and son responsible for the Hanukkah massacre that killed 15 people at Bondi Beach in December[…]
Five teenagers have so far been convicted over the bashings
Several of them congregated around a radical Bankstown prayer hall, Al Madina Dawah Centre, which was ordered to close after the Bondi shooting
Police evidence connected members of the group to two of Australia's most influential pro-IS figures: spiritual leader Wisam Haddad and alleged youth recruiter Wassim Fayad
