Australian Government Faces Questions Over Sydney Gunman

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/world/asia/sydney-gunman-man-haron-monis.html

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SYDNEY, Australia — The Australian authorities came under pressure on Wednesday to explain why the gunman in a siege at a Sydney cafe that left two hostages dead had dropped off a security watch list and was not being monitored despite his criminal record, history of violence, and public airings of his radical views.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott questioned why the gunman, Man Haron Monis, had been removed from a government terrorism watchlist around 2009 and had been granted permanent residency. On Monday, he held 17 people hostage in central Sydney before police brought an end to the 16-hour siege, leaving the gunman and two other people dead.

Mr. Monis had been charged with numerous crimes in recent years and sought to publicize his radical views. Mr. Abbott, who came to office in September last year, appeared to be blaming previous governments for what he described as lapses, including a decision to grant Mr. Monis asylum.

“The system did not adequately deal with the individual, there is no doubt about that,” Mr. Abbott said in a radio interview on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters later in the day, the prime minister said he and his cabinet were incredulous when they learned details of Mr. Monis’s background, including a decision to grant him bail last year in a separate murder case.

“We do need to know why the perpetrator of this horrible outrage got long-term residency,” Mr. Abbott said. “We particularly need to know how someone with such a long record of violence, such a long record of mental health instability, was out on bail after his involvement in a particularly horrific crime.”

Mr. Abbott underlined at his news conference that Mr. Monis held a gun permit, and questioned that decision. But the police in New South Wales later rebutted the prime minister’s claim and said there was “no record” of Mr. Monis having received a firearms permit.

Mr. Monis was facing trial on a number of charges, including being an accessory to the murder of his former wife. He was convicted of harassing the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan and lost his final appeal in that case on Friday, three days before he went to the cafe.

In April, he was 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.

The police on Wednesday raided the southwest Sydney home Mr. Monis shared with his girlfriend, Amirah Droudis, raising a suspicion that she might have played some role in Mr. Monis’s plans. Ms. Droudis has been charged with stabbing and burning to death Mr. Monis’s former wife, Noleen Hayson Pal, last year.

The seriousness of the charges facing Mr. Monis and Ms. Droudis — Ms. Hayson Pal was stabbed 18 times before she was set on fire — has led to questions as to why the two were let out on bail. Daryl Pearce, the magistrate who granted them bail last December, was reported in the Australian news media at the time to have said that bail was a “simple matter of fairness” and that the prosecution’s case was weak. Mr. Monis argued at the hearing that the Iranian secret service was trying to frame him. The New South Wales government seems likely to revoke bail for Ms. Droudis. The New South Wales Police confirmed they conducted a raid on her house on Tuesday.

The state’s attorney general, Brad Hazzard, said in a statement on Tuesday that “it is our intent that offenders involved in serious crime will not get bail.”

The state government is seeking to speed up an overhaul of the bail regulations that was underway well before this week’s shooting.

“The new Bail Act amendments will ensure that an offender charged with being an accessory before the fact of murder will be forced to show cause why they should get bail,” Mr. Hazzard said in a statement.