Lawyer Stefan Balafoutis, centre, races to safety from the cafe. Source: Getty Images
AN Iranian self-styled sheik who sent offensive letters to the families of dead Diggers and is on bail for accessory to murder was last night holding 15 people hostage in a Sydney cafe.
The 49-year-old, who lives in Sydney’s southwest, stormed the Lindt cafe in Martin Place yesterday morning, brandishing a sawn-off shotgun and sparking one of the biggest hostage dramas in the nation’s history.
The heart of Australia’s biggest city was locked down and thousands of office workers were evacuated or kept trapped in their buildings after a gunman stormed the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in the CBD about 9.40am.
The man, understood to be a fringe Islamist, is understood to have taken about 20 people hostage, a figure that dropped by five after three men and two women fled the cafe into the arms of heavily armed assault police. It is understood they were not released by the gunman but had escaped. One of the remaining hostages was last night identified as an Infosys worker.
The gunman, who arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1996, achieved notoriety after he sent letters to the families of Diggers who lost their lives in Afghanistan, accusing them of being murderers.
In November last year, he was charged with being an accessory before and after the fact to the murder of his ex-wife, who was allegedly stabbed and set alight in her apartment complex. In March, he was charged with sexually and indecently assaulting a young woman in 2002.
As police negotiators settled in for a night talking to the man, sources close to the incident urged caution in labelling the attack as one organised or inspired by al-Qa’ida or any similar terrorist group, such as Islamic State. Instead, they painted a picture of an unstable individual well known to NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police and whose motivations were not entirely clear.
NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione last night suggested the siege could last for days.
The attack came at the end of a year dominated by terrorism, with the number of Australians seeking to take up arms for terrorist groups overseas, particularly Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, causing concern for security agencies.
ASIO recently raised the nation’s terror threat level to “high’’, meaning an attack is likely, with police conducting the largest counter-terrorist operation in the country’s history following their discovery of a plot to abduct and behead a member of the public.
Increasingly, authorities fear a “lone-wolf” attack by an individual rather than mass casualty event such as the Bali bombings.
Yesterday’s incident began when the man wearing a headband inscribed with Arabic script walked into the Martin Place cafe and produced a shotgun. Terrified hostages were forced to hold a black flag bearing the inscription of the Shahada — the Muslim profession of faith — against a window, as black-clad teams of assault police and horrified members of the public looked on.
source:theaustralian.com.au
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 