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In Sydney Hostage Siege, Australia’s New Antiterrorism Measures Proved Ineffective
Australia Tries to Figure Out How Gunman Eluded Counterterrorism Effort
(about 2 hours later)
SYDNEY, Australia — Around the time that grisly images of beheadings circulated across the world this fall, Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia introduced a raft of laws in response to what he said was an increasing threat that the Islamic State jihadist group would attempt a bold act of terrorism on Australian soil.
SYDNEY, Australia — The Australian authorities came under increasing pressure Wednesday to explain why the gunman in the armed siege at a Sydney cafe that left two hostages dead was not being monitored despite his criminal record and public airings of his radical views.
The laws, which passed Parliament with wide support, made it an offense to advocate terrorism; banned Australians from going to fight overseas; allowed the authorities to confiscate and cancel passports; and provided for the sharing of information between security services and defense personnel. The government also deployed hundreds of police officers in counterterrorism sweeps across the country.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday said the gunman, Man Haron Monis, “had been of interest to our security agencies” but was not on a government watch list.
None of these measures prevented a man with a long history of run-ins with the law, known to both the police and leaders of Muslim organizations as deeply troubled, from laying siege to a popular downtown cafe this week and holding hostages for 16 hours. The attacker, Man Haron Monis, an Iranian immigrant, and two of the 17 hostages were killed early Tuesday amid the chaos of a police raid. The victims were identified as Katrina Dawson, 38, a lawyer, and the cafe’s manager, Tori Johnson, 34.
“And we want to know why,” Mr. Abbott said in a radio interview Wednesday morning. “We want to know why he wasn’t being monitored.”
As Mr. Abbott said Tuesday: “How can someone who has had such a long and checkered history not be on the appropriate watch lists? And how can someone like that be entirely at large in the community?”
“The system did not adequately deal with the individual, there is no doubt about that,” Mr. Abbott said.
Bret Walker, a lawyer who was Australia’s first independent monitor for national security laws, said, “The new laws don’t add anything to what can be done in advance in a situation like the siege.” In this case, Mr. Monis was overlooked because he did not travel overseas and was not believed to be part of a gang or a terrorist network, experts said.
Mr. Monis, who was fatally shot by the police on Tuesday after the 16-hour siege of a restaurant in downtown Sydney, was facing trial on a number of charges, including being an accessory to the murder of his former wife.
The case, like recent lone-wolf jihadist attacks in Brussels, Ottawa and New York, raises troubling questions about the ability of governments to monitor homegrown, radicalized would-be jihadists and prevent them from doing harm.
He was convicted of harassing families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan and lost his final appeal in that case on Friday, three days before he went to the restaurant and took the people there hostage. In April, he was also charged in the sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney in 2002. Forty more counts of sexual assault involving six other women were later added to that case.
Mr. Monis, who was reported to be armed with a gun, did not appear to have put a great deal of planning into his attack at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe. Arriving at the restaurant with a Shahada flag, which carries the Muslim declaration of faith, he forced hostages to hold that up in a window. He demanded an Islamic State banner in exchange for the release of some hostages, local news media reported. It was unclear if that demand was ever met.
The police on Wednesday raided the southwest Sydney home that Mr. Monis and his girlfriend, Amirzh Droudis, shared, raising questions over whether she might have played some role in Mr. Monis’s plans.
Manny Conditsis, a lawyer who had represented Mr. Monis in previous criminal cases, described him as “on the fringe of the fringe.”
Ms. Droudis has been charged with stabbing and burning to death Mr. Monis’s former wife last year.
“He wasn’t accepted by anybody,” Mr. Conditsis said.
The seriousness of the charges facing Mr. Monis and Ms. Droudis have led to questions as to why they were let out on bail.
The violence in Sydney occurred two months after a gunman in Canada, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, killed a soldier and stormed the Canadian Parliament building in Ottawa, apparently driven by a similar mix of personal disaffection and jihadist zealotry.
The premier of New South Wales, Mike Baird, said Tuesday that he had requested police and justice officials to speed the implementation of laws that would make the criteria for bail more restrictive. The changes to the bail laws were decided well before the siege, but the laws were not to be implemented until next year.
Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau, a convert to Islam, had criminal convictions in cases that included robbery and drug-related offenses.
The violence at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe also left at least three people wounded. A total 17 people were taken hostage when Mr. Monis, armed with a gun, entered the cafe on Monday morning.
Mr. Monis, who won political asylum in Australia two decades ago, had been a Shiite cleric in Iran. He recently wrote on his website that he had converted to the Sunni branch of Islam.
Earlier this year, the Australian government introduced a raft of laws in response to what Mr. Abbott called a growing threat that the Islamic State would attempt a bold act of terrorism on Australian soil.
The similarities among those attacks and one in New York in October, when a man with a hatchet set upon police officers, are the radicalization of people who were isolated from their communities, according to Greg Barton, the director of the Global Terrorism Research Center at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
The laws, which passed Parliament with wide support, made it an offense to advocate terrorism, barred Australians from going to fight overseas, allowed the authorities to confiscate and cancel passports, and provided for the sharing of information between security services and defense personnel.
“There is no easy answer to how you deal with that,” Mr. Barton said. “It is just not possible to put people under 24-hour surveillance unless they are prime suspects.”
The government also deployed hundreds of police officers in counterterrorism sweeps across the country.
In another jihadist attack in Canada, the suspect, Martin Rouleau-Couture, had been under surveillance. Mr. Rouleau, a recent convert to Islam, had posted radical messages on his Facebook page, including screeds against Christianity and Judaism and in praise of the Islamic State’s brutality. He was being monitored by the police for possible extremist activity, and was blocked from traveling abroad in July to join the Islamic State.
That none of these measures prevented this week’s attack has stoked a debate on the effectiveness of counterterrorism measures and their limitations against men like Mr. Monis, who may have been overlooked because he did not travel overseas and was not believed to be part of a gang or a terrorist network.
But on Oct. 20, he ran over two Canadian soldiers in a Quebec parking lot, killing one and injuring another before he was shot and killed by police officers.
“The new laws don’t add anything to what can be done in advance in a situation like the siege,” said Bret Walker, a lawyer who was Australia’s first independent monitor for national security laws.
Canadian officials have acknowledged that keeping Mr. Rouleau in the country may have only fueled his radicalism and put greater burdens on law enforcement to keep track of him.
“The real problem is not a legal issue or something the new laws can fix, but marginalized and radicalized people who may in fact not be breaking counterterrorism laws,” said Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
A shooting in May at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, which left four people dead, raised additional questions about the ability of extremists to travel through Europe with little scrutiny. The French and Belgian authorities say the 29-year-old French suspect, Mehdi Nemmouche, had spent time in Syria with radical Islamists and tried to conceal it by traveling through Asia before entering Europe in Germany.
Raffaello Pantucci, the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said terrorist groups had been pushing the notion of a “lone actor.”
The French government used the case to press for laws that would block travel by possible extremists and increase the government’s ability to block websites that call for violent extremism. In Canada, the government introduced legislation increasing surveillance powers for the country’s spy agency and granting anonymity to informers. Canada has also begun revoking the passports of people suspected of being militants to prevent them from traveling abroad or returning home.
“The attack package is a very low-grade effort,” Mr. Pantucci said. “You don’t tell anyone about it, and that makes it very difficult for intelligence agencies to pick these people up.”
But experts say counterterrorism laws can only do so much short of turning Western democracies into police states.
The Islamic State issued a call in September for a supporter to snatch an Australian at random and behead him.
“The real problem is not a legal issue, or something the new laws can fix, but marginalized and radicalized people who may in fact not be breaking counterterrorism laws before they commit an act like last night’s siege in Sydney,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The police said Tuesday that they would step up patrols of “iconic locations” in Sydney and transportation hubs for the next three weeks.
The more sophisticated jihadist groups, like the Islamic State, know this. Hence its call in September for a supporter to snatch an Australian at random and behead him.
“The idea of a lone actor is something that terrorist groups have been pushing for some time,” said Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “The attack package is a very low-grade effort. You don’t tell anyone about it, and that makes it very difficult for intelligence agencies to pick these people up.”
Yet Mr. Monis gave off ample signals.
Keysar Trad, a spokesman for the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said he met with Mr. Monis over sharply critical letters that Mr. Monis had sent to the families of Australian service members killed in Afghanistan. Mr. Monis was convicted and sentenced to community service for sending the letters, with the authorities using a rarely invoked law covering postal communications.
Last year, he was charged with being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife, who had been stabbed and burned to death. Mr. Monis had been granted bail and was awaiting trial.
At a news conference Tuesday night with Mr. Abbott, Premier Mike Baird of New South Wales State said he had asked that previously planned changes to the bail laws be implemented more quickly.
In a radio interview Wednesday morning, Mr. Abbott also said Australians had a right to know why Mr. Monis was on the street and not in jail, given his violent history.
“He was guilty of many serious crimes, including the crime of harassing the families of dead Australian soldiers,” Mr. Abbott said. “So he was a very, very unsavory individual.”
In April, he was also charged with the sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney in 2002. Forty more counts of sexual assault relating to six other women were later added to that case. Mr. Monis also seemed rattled by his inability to reunite with his family in Iran and by what he described as torture by prison guards during a stint in prison, said Mr. Conditsis, the lawyer.
“He had nothing to lose,” Mr. Conditsis said. “He may have been motivated by what he saw as the inevitability of going to prison.”
