sydney Siege ends; 3 dead, including gunman

Associated Press

SYDNEY

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 long has prided itself on its peace rocked to its core.

After waiting 16 hours, police stormed the Lindt Chocolat Cafe early today 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.

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. Among the four wounded was a police officer shot in the face.

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.

Officials rolled one gurney out of the cafe carrying what appeared to be a man draped in a blood-soaked sheet with a bloody handprint in the center. Paramedics also carried away a woman with blood-covered feet.

“I can only imagine the terror that they’ve been through,” Scipione said. “They are very brave people who in many cases were just buying a cup of coffee, and they got caught up in this dreadful affair. We should reflect on their courage.”

While Monis’ motivation for the attack was still unclear, Abbott confirmed he was “well-known” to state and federal authorities.

Last year, he was convicted and sentenced to 300 hours of community service for using the postal service to send 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 had been out on bail on the charges.

“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.

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 #IllRideWithYou was used more than 90,000 times by late Monday evening.