Prosecutor and Monis's lawyer agreed on bail, Sydney siege inquest told
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Version 0 of 1. Two months before the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney, Man Haron Monis’s lawyer and the public prosecutor agreed Monis would remain free on bail when he faced court on serious charges the next day, an inquest heard on Friday. Detectives from the sex crime squad laid 37 new charges of sexual assault against Monis, the gunman at the centre of the siege, when he appeared at Penrith local court on 10 October 2014. Related: Sydney siege would have been extremely hard to predict, inquest told These were in addition to two counts of accessory to murder and three sexual assault charges the self-styled Islamic cleric was facing. Monis had been on bail and was allowed to remain free that day despite the new charges, which arose from alleged offences against six women. The director of public prosecutions (DPP) solicitor who handled the case that day was a relative newcomer. He had worked overseas as a solicitor but was just two months into his job at the DPP and was handling his first bail matter. The solicitor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the inquest into the siege he acted appropriately when he agreed with Monis’s solicitor that bail would not be opposed. “I believe that I acted within my powers on that day and that I acted reasonably,” the solicitor told the inquest on Friday. The inquest is investigating how authorities responded to Monis receiving bail on three occasions before the December 2014 siege and whether there was a causal link between him being on bail and the siege deaths. Hostages Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson lost their lives in the siege and Monis was killed by police. The solicitor’s assessment was that he could not ask the court to revoke bail as Monis had not breached bail for the accessory to murder charges. He also said there was no new evidence to support a detention application – despite a homicide detective saying she had provided “fresh and compelling” evidence. Counsel assisting the inquest, Jeremy Gormly SC, asked the solicitor if it was not incumbent upon him to alert the magistrate about the dramatic change in the charges against Monis, given the magistrate would not be able to read 40 charge sheets in court. Gormly said the charges painted a picture “of a person who was engaging in a particularly manipulative form of sexual imposition on a number of women over a prolonged period”. He said the magnitude and seriousness of the sexual assault charges was such that it was not appropriate to concede bail by way of agreement with Monis’s solicitor. “These matters should have been drawn to the attention of the court,” Gormly said. The solicitor replied: “I reject that proposition.” The inquest heard the DPP had sent staff an email in May 2014 outlining new procedures requiring solicitors to speak to their manager about any case involving planned concessions on bail. The solicitor, who started work in August 2014, said he had not seen the email and had not discussed the decision not to oppose Monis’s bail with a manager. If the DPP had a policy on how bail concessions should be handled, he had never seen it, he said. Claire Partington, the former managing solicitor of the Penrith director of public prosecutions office, told the Sydney siege inquest she was concerned that a DPP solicitor didn’t keep notes taken when he met with detectives before Monis faced court on accessory to murder charges in December 2013. Related: Sydney siege inquest recap – episode 14 “Those conference notes should have gone with the prosecution file,” Partington said. She said she was not aware the notes had been thrown away. Previously the DPP solicitor, who cannot be identified, told the inquest he had thrown away his working file on Monis’s accessory to murder charges in November 2014 as part of a cleanout of his office, despite the case not having gone to court. The inquest has heard the solicitor did not tender evidence provided by police when he opposed Monis’s application for bail because he did not believe it was persuasive. Homicide detectives were scathing of the solicitor’s handling of the case – with an email revealed at the inquest showing one detective told his superior the solicitor was “terrible” and not across the brief. The prosecutor defended his handling of the bail application, saying he had marshalled his argument against bail as best as he could. |