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Police Say Hostage-Taker at Sydney Cafe Is Self-Proclaimed Sheikh
Police Storm Sydney Cafe to End Hostage Siege
(35 minutes later)
SYDNEY, Australia — The man behind an extended hostage crisis in the center of Sydney is a self-proclaimed sheikh who lives in the city’s western suburbs and has a criminal record, the police confirmed early on Tuesday.
SYDNEY, Australia — Heavily armed police officers stormed a Sydney cafe early Tuesday where an armed man said to be a self-proclaimed sheikh held hostages for more than 16 hours.
A spokeswoman for the New South Wales Police said that local media reports identifying the hostage-taker as Man Haron Monis were correct. “Earlier in the investigation, his name was suppressed for operational reasons,” she said. “But it is now in the public domain.”
Live television images of the scene showed intense flashes of gunfire and the sound of loud ammunition rounds being fired. Police were racing into the building with weapons drawn, followed by medics with stretchers. But the number of casualties was not immediately clear.
According to the police, Mr. Monis walked into the Lindt Chocolate Café, a popular spot for tourists and office workers on the Martin Place pedestrian mall in the city center, around 9:45 a.m. Monday local time, locking the door and capturing an unknown number of cafe workers and customers. He was carrying a black flag with white Arabic script similar to those used by Islamic militants on other continents, and the flag was later displayed in the window of the cafe.
“Sydney siege is over. More details to follow,” the New South Wales Police said in a Twitter message at about 2:45 a.m.
Helicopters hovered over the city, the train network was temporarily stopped and strategic buildings — including the nearby Sydney Opera House, the New South Wales Parliament, the state library, law courts and the Reserve Bank — were evacuated or shut down. Traffic on part of Sydney’s iconic Harbor Bridge was stopped.
Just before the police entered the building, at least six hostages were seen running from the cafe.
Five people, including two cafe employees, had fled by 7 p.m., but it was not clear whether the assailant had allowed them to leave or they had escaped. The police released very little information about the scene inside the cafe or the suspect’s motives, though they were treating the siege as they would an act of terrorism.
Earlier, the police confirmed that the hostage-taker was Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born man in his 50’s with a criminal record who called himself Sheikh Haron. Australian media reports quoted the man’s former lawyer as saying he was acting alone. But it was unclear whether the gunman had accomplices.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in a televised appearance from Canberra, the nation’s capital, referred to the suspect as “an armed person claiming political motivation.”
The siege had transfixed Australia since Monday morning, when the gunman took control of the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in central Sydney, with an unknown number of employees and customers trapped inside. The man was carrying a black flag with white Arabic script similar to those used by Islamic militants on other continents, and the flag was later displayed in the window of the cafe.
“This is obviously a deeply concerning incident,” he said in a statement. “But all Australians should be reassured that our law enforcement and security agencies are well trained and equipped and are responding in a thorough and professional manner.”
Five people, including two cafe employees, had fled by 7 p.m. Monday, but it was not clear whether the assailant had allowed them to leave or they had escaped.
He said he had briefed the cabinet’s National Security Committee twice within six hours, and two ministers were returning from overseas, underscoring the seriousness of the siege.
Helicopters hovered over the city, the train network was temporarily stopped and strategic buildings — including the nearby Sydney Opera House, the New South Wales Parliament, the state library, law courts and the Reserve Bank — were evacuated or shut down. Traffic was stopped on part of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Stephen Loane, the chief executive of Lindt Australia, said that nine or 10 employees were inside the cafe when the siege started, along with an unknown number of customers. “Originally, we were thinking it was a holdup,” he said, but “by the time I got down there, the streets were blocked off and there was a different situation.”
According to The Age, a national newspaper, Mr. Monis was free on bail in two separate criminal cases. He was charged in November 2013 with being an accessory before and after the fact in the murder of his ex-wife, Noleen Hayson Pal, who was stabbed and set on fire in an apartment in Werrington.
Soon after the siege began, a commercial television network, Channel Seven, which has a nearby studio, showed images of people, one wearing the Lindt Café uniform, pressed against the cafe window, holding up the black flag with white script. The message, though not entirely visible, appeared to be the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith.
In April 2014, Mr. Monis was charged with the indecent and sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney in 2002.
On Monday, the New South Wales deputy police commissioner, Catherine Burn, said that the police had made contact with the armed person inside the cafe, and that they were working to resolve the standoff “peacefully.”
The police have said that Mr. Monis held himself out as a spiritual healer and conducted business on Station Street at Wentworthville.
“Nobody has been harmed or injured at the moment,” she said. “We have been working through our negotiations to try to make sure that people inside” have “what they need so that they don’t become ill or injured.'’
Mr. Monis also pleaded guilty in 2013 to 12 charges related to the sending of poison-pen letters to the families of Australian servicemen who were killed overseas, local press reports said.
Offices near the cafe were evacuated and a number of streets were closed, the police said. The police also asked that people in offices nearby “remain indoors and away from open windows.”
A website apparently associated with Mr. Monis includes condemnation of the United States and Australia for their military actions against Islamic militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Live television showed shoppers and office workers gathered some distance from the cafe, behind shelters, and television news showed heavily armed police officers in the area.
A Muslim community leader in Sydney, Dr. Jamal Rifi, said in a televised interview that “everything he stands for is wrong.” “It has nothing to do with Islam as a religion whatsoever, and we have all seen that by his previous action and his current actions,” Mr. Rifi said of Mr. Monis.
The United States Consulate General in Sydney, about a block from the cafe, was evacuated. A spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Canberra said that American officials did not yet know the nationality of the people being held.
Local media reports said that Mr. Monis also goes by the name Sheikh Haron. He was charged with being an accessory to the murder of his former wife in April 2013, and he pleaded guilty that same year to 12 charges related to the sending of poison-pen letters to the families of Australian servicemen who were killed overseas. A website apparently associated with Mr. Monis includes condemnation of the United States and Australia for their military actions against Islamic militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Muslim community leader in Sydney, Dr. Jamal Rifi, said in a televised interview that “everything he stands for is wrong.” “It has nothing to do with Islam as a religion whatsoever, and we have all seen that by his previous action and his current actions," Mr. Rifi said of Mr. Monis.
Dr. Rifi said that he did not know Mr. Monis personally, but that he did know his family well. He said Mr. Monis is not a sheikh, but wears traditional clothes and a beard. “He had no religious qualifications whatsoever," Dr. Rifi said. “He has never been associated with any mainstream mosque, and he is not associated with any of our religious leaders whatsoever. He is self-proclaimed.”
James Brown, a military analyst at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, said on Monday, before Mr. Monis was identified, that while “someone in that shop wants us to know they have an Islamic link,” it was not clear what his motives were.
“They could be doing it for any one of a number of reasons; it could be a terror-related incident,” he said of the assailant or assailants on the cafe. “It is unclear what outcome they want.”
Prof. Adam Dolnik, who researches terrorism at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales, said the hostage-taker seemed likely to be either “a lone wolf sympathetic to the issues of the Islamic State and the goal of jihad more generally” or a case of “psychopathology in search of a cause.”
A spokesman for the Islamic State militant group in the Middle East, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, issued a statement in September asking Muslims in Australia to carry out attacks of their own.
On Sept. 12, Mr. Abbott raised Australia’s terrorism alert level to high from medium after warnings from the nation’s security officials that there were increased threats to the nation. He gave the police broader powers to arrest terrorist suspects and tightened restrictions on the news media’s reporting on national security matters.
Two weeks later, police officers in Melbourne fatally shot a man who attacked them with a knife.
In October, Mr. Abbott said Australia would join American forces in conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, sending a squadron of fighter jets and several hundred Australian military personnel to the Middle East.
The decision was criticized by some analysts in Australia as likely to foment more anger from young Australian Muslim extremists.
The Australian Federal Police made seven arrests for terrorism offenses in the 12 months ending Oct. 31.
The black flag with the shahada has been used for centuries by Islamic groups, but in recent years it has been appropriated by jihadi groups including Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
If the cafe siege turns out to be a jihadi-inspired, it would be one of a handful of such attacks carried out outside the Middle East in recent months, including one in Brussels and possibly two in Canada, and one in London last year.
Australian intelligence officials have estimated that about 70 Australian citizens, typically disaffected young Muslim men from immigrant families, have joined the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. The passports of about 100 others have been canceled for fear they might do the same, they said.
The grand mufti of Australia, Prof. Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, and the Australian National Imams Council issued a joint statement in which they said they “condemn this criminal act unequivocally.”
Lindt posted a statement to its Facebook page thanking people “for their thoughts and kind support.” The statement added that, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the staff and customers involved and all their friends and families.”
