This week in Sydney, two people died, along with an Islamist gunman, after commandos stormed a café in the centre of the City, to bring to an end a 16-hour siege. Local media have named those who died as Lindt café manager Tori Johnson, 34 and lawyer Katrina Dawson, 38. Four people were injured, including a policeman hit by shotgun pellets. Central Sydney was put in lockdown as the gunman, identified as an Iranian refugee, seized dozens of hostages early on Monday.
The incident raised all sorts of questions about our society, the way that we administer justice, the protection we offer to people in society and the way that we deal with people who have emotional and mental problems that need treatment. It also focuses world attention on Australia, which for decades has been wrestling with the issue of “isolation” and the “tyranny of distance” from the rest of the world, both a blessing and a curse, it seems.
The gunman who took innocent victims hostage was Man Haron Monis, a self-styled sheikh who hung a flag bearing the Shahada – “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God” in the window of the Lindt café at the beginning of the siege. There has been some speculation that Monis was acting on behalf of Islamic State. One of his demands was for an Isis flag, but Isis is yet to claim responsibility for Monis or the siege. Monis apparently was a deeply unstable person with a long history of violence and mental illness and he was on bail while waiting trial for a number of crimes, including the charge of being an accessory to the stabbing murder of his ex-wife, Noleen Hayson Pal, in December last year.
Bail is a core part of the criminal justice system and allows a person to be released from custody pending the outcome of a case against him or her, with certain conditions. Because the decision to refuse bail can impact on a person’s liberty before he or she has been convicted of an offence, it involves a careful assessment of factors including the potential risks posed to the community and the presumption of innocence.
Monis was facing two different sets of charges, the first relating to a series of sexual assault charges and the second relating to being an accessory to the murder of his former wife. He was initially refused bail on 14 April at Kogarah local court but later granted bail on 26 May at Parramatta local court. These decisions would have involved an assessment as to whether Monis might have committed a serious offence, whether he would be a danger to the community, whether he might interfere with evidence and the strength of the prosecution’s case. Questions remain as to why Monis was granted bail and whether it should have been granted, given the violent acts he committed, which resulted in his death and the death of two innocent people.
The head of the Iranian police, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, has told journalists in Tehran that Monis fled Iran in the late 1990s wanted on fraud charges. He said the Iranian government had sought his extradition but Australia rebuffed that request. Rumour has it that Monis arrived as a representative of the Iranian government on a business visa and claimed political asylum later. Monis himself said he was involved with Iran’s ministry of intelligence but fell out with the regime because of his liberal views. He also said his wife and child were being kept under house arrest. The facts of the case are still unknown and an investigation will hopefully shed light on some of these questions.
As Australia becomes more and more involved in international affairs, as we begin to see our citizens becoming embroiled in political, religious, social and security affairs that are now of global concern, we need to examine the way in which our society functions so as to protect its members from events like the Sydney siege. Could our laws, our justice system and our daily life change in a beneficial way so that the quality of life we have enjoyed so far continue into the future? Or should we just bow our head down and acknowledge that the world has become a terrible place and as Australia is part this world resign ourselves to the fact that our “Golden Age” is no more?
Bail should not have been given to a crazed ideologue who had committed many sexual and violent crimes in the past.
ReplyDeleteBut let us say the courts ignored the police and gave Monis bail anyhow. Does that mean he was off scot free until his court date? Of course not. A person on bail should be under the close inspection of the police, reporting daily or twice daily. And how does any Australian civilian get a gun? How did the police and security people not see the lunatic's gun?
Valid questions that are on every sane person's mind, Hels. And I can only begin to imagine how the families of the victims must feel, having lost a lovable, bright, young son and daughter whose life had just begun to be lived and which promised so much to society. My thoughts are with those families in their loss and I don't know how any politician or judge can look them in the eye and tell them that they had done everything they could to have prevented their death.
DeleteHere in the US, I reacted with a sad and resigned sigh when the story of this hostage scenario broke. It is one more incident of an ideologue using the freedoms of an open society to inflict an extreme message via terror actions. How sad that the justice system is being played against itself when this man's civil rights are respected and he is set free to wend his way toward a total meltdown. This kind of terror act makes all of us question gun control aws, mental health system procedures, and the justice system's bail procedures and monitoring. On another note, I am so very sorry for moderate Muslim people who must be feeling so frustrated that this man's actions lead the wider world to judge the Muslim faith by his extreme behavior.
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to the families of the lost and wounded and the Australian nation, as it grapples with this horrific act.
Susan
DeleteI think you are quite right. The idea of giving bail to a person who was a] a convicted criminal, b] once on the nation's Terror Watch List and c] currently charged with accessory to the murder of his ex-wife... is unthinkable. But bail is a state responsibility and will have to be sorted out by the NSW Parliament.
Banning guns (except for police, army etc), on the other hand, was a national responsibility. Our Federal Parliament sorted guns out soon after the Port Arthur massacre of 1996. For nearly 20 years, we Australians had assumed that we were largely protected from guns. I believe that if nothing good comes out of this hostage tragedy, as least there will be a Commission of Enquiry at the highest level to see where the gun laws failed so tragically. And to write new legislation.
Such a great pity that some people living in a society espousing freedom and equity take advantage of it for their own ends. There is something fundamentally wrong if a society doesn't take enough precautions (if they can be taken) to prevent situations like this from occurring. In this case refusing bail or keeping this person under police watch may have prevented tragedy.
ReplyDelete