Australia asks why Sydney gunman was free, despite violent, extremist past
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 17 December, 2014, 11:34am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 17 December, 2014, 11:34am
Bloomberg
This April 18, 2011, photo shows Man Haron Monis outside a Sydney court. He was facing a raft of charges, ranging from sexual assault to being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife. Photo: AFP
Australian authorities are probing why the gunman responsible for a deadly Sydney hostage-taking was free on bail and not on a watchlist, despite his history of violence and extremist sympathies.
Man Haron Monis, 50, died along with two of his captives when police stormed the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in the early hours of Tuesday, after a 16-hour siege. The self-proclaimed cleric from Iran was awaiting trial on a string of charges including being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife, and had warned that Australia faced an attack for sending troops to Afghanistan.
“The system did not adequately deal with this individual,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio today. “We want to know why he wasn’t being monitored given his history of violence, his history of instability, his history of infatuation with extremism.”
New South Wales Premier Mike Baird echoed those concerns and said Sydneysiders had “every right to feel upset” Monis had been at large.
Monis arrived in Australia in 1996 claiming to be a refugee. Iran’s Fars news agency said Australia denied an attempt to extradite him back to the Islamic Republic, where he’d been indicted for fraud and went by the name of Mohammad Hassan Manteghi Bourjerdi.
He had worked as the managing director of a tourist agency in Iran and fled the country with about US$200,000 of clients’ money, a former co-worker said in a telephone interview.
“He didn’t act crazy or strange,” Sassan Khalebani said. “He was a good manager, that is until he stole the money.”
Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, Iran’s chief of police, was cited by Fars news as saying Monis was a conman who changed his name and put on clerical robes to get political asylum.
Monis faced charges including being an accessory with his girlfriend to the murder of his ex-wife, who was stabbed and then set alight in Sydney. He had also been charged this year with dozens of sexual offenses dating back a decade, when he had operated as a “spiritual healer”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
He was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and placed on a two-year good-behaviour bond for writing offensive letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, the Herald reported. Monis failed in his final bid to overturn that indictment on December 12, court documents show.
“We’re all outraged that this guy was on the street,” Baird said on Tuesday. “We need to understand why he was, we also need to understand why he wasn’t picked up, and we’ll be working closely with the federal authorities together with our own agencies to ensure what we can do better.”
State Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters today his force had applied to have Monis refused bail on the accessory-to-murder charge and that the decision had been taken by the courts.
Authorities are also investigating how Monis acquired the sawnoff shotgun apparently used in the attack, Abbott said.
Monis held 17 hostages in the cafe on Martin Place, a plaza at the heart of Sydney’s financial and legal district, and forced some to hold a black Islamic flag known as a Shahada against the window.
Mother-of-three Katrina Dawson, a 38-year-old barrister, and cafe manager Tori Johnson, 34, were killed. Three others and a police officer received gunshot wounds.
