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December 18, 2014

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Australia orders sweeping probe into hostage crisis

Source: Agencies | December 18, 2014, Thursday | Print Edition

AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday ordered a sweeping investigation into a deadly hostage crisis after tough new security laws and the courts failed to stop a convicted felon from walking into a Sydney cafe with a concealed shotgun.

Three people were killed, including hostage-taker Man Haron Monis, when police stormed a Sydney cafe early on Tuesday morning to free terrified hostages held at gunpoint for 16 hours. Police are investigating whether the two captives were killed by Monis or died in crossfire.

Monis, a self-styled sheikh who received political asylum from Iran in 2001, was well known to Australian authorities, having been charged as an accessory to murder and with dozens of counts of sexual and indecent assault. He had been free on bail.

Australia passed sweeping security laws in October aimed at stopping people from becoming radicalized and going to fight in conflicts such as those in Iraq and Syria, where many Australians have joined militant groups, as well as preventing attacks at home.

Despite those new powers, Abbott said Monis was not on any security watchlist and managed to walk undetected into the Lindt Chocolate Cafe with a legally obtained shotgun on a workday morning. New South Wales state police later contradicted Abbott’s assertion, saying in a statement that there was no record of Monis having a gun license.

Monis was convicted in 2012 of sending hate mail to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Abbott said the national and state governments would conduct an urgent review to identify where the system had failed in order to understand how attacks could be stopped in future.

“We do need to know why the perpetrator of this horrible outrage got permanent residency. We do need to know how he could’ve been on welfare for so many years. We do need to know what this individual was doing with a gun license,” Abbott told media.

Record of violence

“We particularly need to know how someone with such a long record of violence, such a long record of mental instability, was out on bail after his involvement in a particularly horrific crime. And we do need to know why he seems to have fallen off our security agencies’ watchlist, back in about 2009,” he said in Canberra.

The justice system in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, was also under fire. “We were concerned this man got bail from the very beginning,” said Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione.

Police had requested courts refuse Monis bail but were not paying special attention to him because his charges were not linked to political violence and he was not on any watchlist, Scipione added.

Yesterday, people were still laying flowers and signing condolence books in Martin Place, a pedestrian mall near the scene of the cafe siege.

Police said they would be boosting their presence in prominent locations such as Sydney Harbor for the next three weeks as a precaution.

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