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| A hostage runs to armed tactical response police officers for safety after she escaped from a cafe under siege at Martin Place in the central business district of Sydney, Australia, Monday, Dec. 15, 2014. New South Wales state police would not say what was happening inside the cafe or whether hostages were being held. But television footage shot through the cafe's windows showed several people with their arms in the air. |
SYDNEY (AP)
-- The deadly siege began in the most incongruous of ways, on a sunny
Monday morning inside a cheerful cafe in the heart of Australia's
largest city. An Iranian-born gunman burst in, took 17 people hostage,
and forced some to hold a flag with an Islamic declaration of faith
above the shop window's festive inscription of "Merry Christmas."
It
ended after midnight with a barrage of gunfire that left two hostages
and the gunman dead, four others wounded, and a nation that has long
prided itself on its peace rocked to its core.
After
waiting 16 hours, police stormed the Lindt Chocolat Cafe early Tuesday
when they heard gunfire inside, said New South Wales state police
Commissioner Andrew Scipione.
A loud bang rang
out, several hostages ran from the building and police swooped in amid
heavy gunfire, shouts and flashes. A police bomb disposal robot also was
sent into the building, but no explosives were found.
"They
made the call because they believed that at that time, if they didn't
enter, there would have been many more lives lost," Scipione said.
The
gunman was identified as 50-year-old Man Haron Monis, who once was
prosecuted for sending offensive letters to families of Australian
troops killed in Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Monis had "a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and mental instability."
Scipione
wouldn't say whether the two hostages who were killed - a 34-year-old
man and a 38-year-old woman - were caught in crossfire, or shot by their
captor.
One of the victims was Sydney lawyer and mother-of-three Katrina Dawson.
"Katrina
was one of our best and brightest barristers who will be greatly missed
by her colleagues and friends" Jane Needham, president of the New South
Wales Bar Association, said in a statement.
The other victim was identified in Australian media as the manager of the cafe, Tori Johnson.
Deputy
Police Commissioner Catherine Burn said three women were treated in
hospital for gunshot wounds and were in stable condition. A police
officer was treated for shotgun pellet wounds and discharged, she said.
Burn
said another two women were treated for "health and welfare purposes."
Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that those women were pregnant.
Burn said police do not know what had motivated Monis. She declined to detail his demands.
"This
is a man who had serious history of criminal offences and a history of
violence. This was a man that we do believe had some extremist views and
we also believe that he was unstable," Burn told reporters.
She
confirmed that Monis was free on bail when he died. Police were
investigating whether he was the registered owner of the shotgun that he
used.
Monis was convicted and sentenced last
year to 300 hours of community service for sending what a judge called
"grossly offensive" letters to families of soldiers killed in
Afghanistan between 2007 and 2009.
At the time, Monis said his letters were "flowers of advice," adding: "Always, I stand behind my beliefs."
Monis
later was charged with being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.
Earlier this year, he was charged with the sexual assault of a woman in
2002. He has been out on bail on the charges.
"He
had a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and
mental instability," Abbott said. "As the siege unfolded yesterday, he
sought to cloak his actions with the symbolism of the ISIL death cult.
Tragically, there are people in our community ready to engage in
politically motivated violence."
"This is a
one-off random individual. It's not a concerted terrorism event or act.
It's a damaged-goods individual who's done something outrageous," his
former lawyer, Manny Conditsis, told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
"His ideology is just so strong and so powerful that it clouds his vision for common sense and objectiveness," Conditsis said.
Flags
were lowered to half-staff on the landmark Harbour Bridge as
Australians awakened to the surreal conclusion of the crisis. The
state's premier expressed disbelief that the attack could happen in
Australia - a place he dubbed "a peaceful, harmonious society which is
the envy of the world."
The siege began about
9:45 a.m. in Martin Place, a plaza in Sydney's financial and shopping
district that was packed with holiday shoppers. Many of those inside the
cafe would have been taken captive as they stopped in for their morning
coffees.
Hundreds of police flooded the city.
Streets were closed and offices evacuated. The public was told to stay
away from Martin Place, site of the state premier's office, the Reserve
Bank of Australia, and the headquarters of two of the nation's largest
banks. The state parliament house is a few blocks away, and the famous
Sydney Opera House also is nearby.
Throughout
the day, several hostages were seen with their arms in the air and hands
pressed against the window of the cafe, with two people holding up a
black flag with the Shahada, or Islamic declaration of faith, written on
it.
The Shahada, which translates as, "There
is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger," is considered the
first of Islam's five pillars of faith. It is pervasive throughout
Islamic culture, including the green flag of Saudi Arabia. Jihadis have
used the Shahada in their own black flag.
Channel
10 news said it received a video in which a hostage in the cafe had
relayed the gunman's demands. The station said police requested they not
broadcast it, and Scipione separately asked media that might be
contacted by the gunman to urge him instead to talk to police.
Australian
Muslim groups condemned the hostage-taking in a joint statement and
said the flag's inscription was a "testimony of faith that has been
misappropriated by misguided individuals."
In a
show of solidarity, many Australians offered on Twitter to accompany
people dressed in Muslim clothes who were afraid of a backlash against
the country's tiny Muslim minority of some 500,000 people in a nation of
24 million. The hashtag (hash)IllRideWithYou was used more than 90,000
times by late Monday evening.
Seven Network
television news staff watched the gunman and hostages for hours from a
fourth floor window of their Sydney offices, opposite the cafe.
The
gunman could be seen pacing back and forth past the cafe's windows.
Reporter Chris Reason said the man carried what appeared to be a
pump-action shotgun, was unshaven and wore a white shirt and a black
cap.
Some of the hostages were forced up against the windows.
"The
gunman seems to be sort of rotating these people through these
positions on the windows with their hands and faces up against the
glass," Reason said in a report. "One woman we've counted was there for
at least two hours - an extraordinary, agonizing time for her, surely,
having to stand on her feet for that long."
"When
we saw that rush of escapees, we could see from up here in this vantage
point the gunman got extremely agitated as he realized those five had
got out. He started screaming orders at the people, the hostages who
remain behind," he added.
As night set in, the
lights inside the cafe were switched off. Armed police guarding the
area outside fitted their helmets with green-glowing night goggles.
Lindt issued a statement saying it was "profoundly saddened and deeply affected about the death of innocent people."
"Our
thoughts and feelings are with the victims and their families who have
been through an incredible ordeal, and we want to pay tribute to their
courage and bravery," said the statement from the Swiss company Lindt
& Sprugli.
Australia's government raised
the country's terror warning level in September in response to the
domestic threat posed by supporters of the Islamic State group, also
known as ISIL. Counterterror law enforcement teams later conducted
dozens of raids and made several arrests in Australia's three largest
cities - Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. One man arrested during a
series of raids in Sydney was charged with conspiring with an Islamic
State leader in Syria to behead a random person in Sydney.
The
Islamic State group, which holds a third of Syria and Iraq, has
threatened Australia in the past. In September, its spokesman Abu
Mohammed al-Adnani issued a message urging attacks abroad, specifically
mentioning Australia.
One terrorism expert
said the situation appeared to be that of a "lone wolf" making his own
demands, rather than an attack orchestrated by a foreign jihadist group.
"There
haven't been statements from overseas linking this to extremist groups
outside the country - that is quite positive," said Charles Knight,
lecturer in the Department of Policing, Intelligence and Counter
Terrorism at Australia's Macquarie University.
