Sydney Siege
Cathy Wilcox Sydney Morning Herald
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Alan Moir Sydney Morning Herald
Andrew Dyson The Age
Bill Leak The Australian
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David Pope Canberra Times
On 15–16 December 2014, a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage nine customers and eight employees of a Lindt chocolate café located at Martin Place in Sydney, Australia. After a 16-hour standoff, during which areas of the Sydney central business district surrounding the site were cordoned off and nearby buildings locked down, police officers from the Tactical Operations Unit stormed the café upon hearing gunshots from inside. At least one hostage was shot by Monis, who himself was shot dead after police entered in response. Two hostages died, while three hostages and a police officer were injured during the police raid. Early on, hostages were seen holding a jihadist black flag up against the window of the café, with the Islamic shahadah creed written on it in Arabic. Initially some media mistook it for the flag used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); the gunman later demanded that an ISIL flag be brought to him in the middle of the crisis. The gunman was described as having indicated a "political motivation". Police treated the event as a terrorist attack, and negotiated with Monis throughout the day. About 50 Muslim groups issued a joint statement in which they condemned the incident. The gunman, born in Iran as Mohammad Hassan Manteghi, had been granted political asylum in Australia in 2001. He had a history of criminal charges including sexual assault, and was to be tried as an accessory in his ex-wife's murder. He had been convicted for criminal use of the postal service to "menace, harass or cause offence", for sending letters to the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan in which he called the soldiers murderers.
Eric Lobbecke The Australian
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Warren Brown The Daily Telegraph
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Neil Matterson The Sunday Mail (Queensland)
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Five days on from the Martin Place siege that claimed two lives and placed Sydney's CBD in lockdown, and questions still remain about what transpired inside the Lindt cafe, especially during the early hours of Tuesday. Given the nature of the siege and what transpired when police stormed the cafe, a senior police source said there would not be one single person who knew what took place. About2am, with the siege now in its 17th hour, Monis began sorting the 18 hostages into separate groups inside the cafe, and one group kicked down an internal door and made their escape, a father of one hostage said. Fairfax Media has been told that Monis, believed to be armed with a pumpaction shotgun, managed to fire five rounds. There have been varying reports that Ms Dawson was shot either by police, or by Monis -- perhaps even both -- however, on Friday police sources were still adamant it was too early to speculate. Security experts have asked why commandos, located at Holsworthy and who trained specifically for hostage situations before the G20 summit just weeks earlier, were not brought in. However, the NSW police force's tactical operations group is a highly skilled unit that deals with at least 200 "high-risk" situations, including siege and hostage scenarios, each week. Even while its officers were stationed outside the Lindt cafe on Monday night, another unit had been dispatched to Sydney's western suburbs to de-
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Cathy Wilcox Sydney Morning Herald
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