Sydney hostage crisis over…
…with the gunman dead in an early-morning police raid.
Unfortunately, two of the hostages are reported to have been killed in the rescue, although there’s a lack of information as yet on how it happened.
The gunman was an Islamic cleric of Iranian origin who has lived in Australia for almost two decades, and was previously charged with multiple sexual assaults and possibly murdered his ex-wife:
[Haron] Monis was born in Iran as Manteghi Bourjerdi and migrated to Australia in 1996, according to Australia’s 9News. In 2013 he made headlines when he pleaded guilty to sending letters to the families of fallen Australian servicemen in which he called the soldiers “murderers” and child killers. Monis was sentenced to community service.
Australian media reported more recently that Monis had been accused of dozens of counts of sexual assault while he was working as a “spiritual healer” and was allegedly linked to the brutal murder of an ex-wife.
The report also says that Monis had been reported to Sydney police, although it doesn’t say what for:
Dr. Jamal Rifi, a Sydney Muslim community leader, told 9News that the Muslim community had approached police about Monis before.
“We’re not going to let thugs or radicals or the racists decide our society for us,” he said.
Sounds as though the authorities may have been trying to build a case against him when for some reason (still not clearly stated) he decided to go the taking-of-hostages route.
How did Monis originally get admitted to Australia in 1996, the year he emigrated there? Political asylum. But he’s been in a heap of trouble lately:
He is well known to the Australian police and is currently on bail for being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.
He is also facing more than 40 sexual and indecent assault charges.
These relate to time allegedly spent as a self-proclaimed “spiritual healer” who dealt with so-called black magic at a premises in western Sydney, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Monis has previously been convicted of sending offensive letters to the families of deceased Australian soldiers.
Nice guy. Why was he out on bail? Hard to say, although I suppose the murder case against him wasn’t strong enough, even combined with previous convictions:
Man Haron Monis, 49, was charged in November with being an accessory before and after the fact to the murder of mother-of-two Noleen Hayson Pal.
His current partner, Amirah Droudis, 34, has been charged with the murder after 30-year-old Ms Pal was stabbed multiple times and set alight in a western Sydney unit block.
The accused pair were given bail at Penrith Local Court today after a bail application hearing that lasted more than three hours.
…Magistrate Darryl Pearce said there were significant flaws in the Crown’s case against the pair.
“It is a weak case,” he said.
This prognostication turns out to have been wrong:
Each of the accused had an alibi, the witness statements varied significantly, they didn’t have anywhere else to go and they weren’t a threat to the public, the magistrate said.
“If there is a threat it was to this woman who was murdered.”
Monis’ activities were suspicious on the day Pal—with whom he’d been engaged in a bitter custody battle—was murdered (read the article for the details).
Here is a photo of the murdered woman in happier days, pictured with her brother:
Monis may have actually been a lone wolf in terms of the act of taking hostages, but he was an “ideological fanatic” according to his own lawyer.
[ADDENDUM: Patrick Poole calls it “Known Wolf Syndrome.” In the case of Monis, though, it’s hard to see what else could have been done, except to deny him bail, and that was a judgment call. I have a question, though: was he a citizen of Australia? If not, could he have been deported?]
[ADDENDUM II: Michael Totten on the gunman’s message.]
Though unindicted co-conspirators, i.e., Western officialdom , apologists, appeasers, dispensationalists – as in Rotherham – remain at large, free to reassure us it had nothing to do with Islam. Abhorring Islam has its drawbacks; to what then does one resort when considering the greater villainy — the treachery that had brought it amongst us – and continues to do so?
I can’t help wondering how long it will be until an Islamist comes over our southern border as a Latino Illegal and destroys a crowded restaurant or shopping center in California. You remember Southern California, you know, home of the tallest downtown L.A. building that was saved a repeat 9-11 by those awful torturers in the CIA who got the info ahead of time by their Evil Rendition methods?
‘Nuf said.
I recommend, as your Ozzie link, Tim Blair:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/
We have plenty of our own jihad supporters, but more will or already have crossed the southern border. How many more must die before the West gets serious about closing off any additional muslim infiltration?
“How many more must die before the West gets serious about closing off any additional muslim infiltration?”
Many in the west will not take the threat seriously until they are personally threatened. When jihadist terrorist cells start attacking American shopping malls and cutting off American women and children’s heads and, Libyan and Syrian MANPADS are used to blow up American passenger jets as they are taking off and landing… that ought to do it.
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
By the way – also in 2009, in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre, General George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, famously said: “It would be a shame – as great a tragedy as this was – it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”
Some things never change.
http://gatesofvienna.net/
Geoffrey Britain Says:
December 15th, 2014 at 5:36 pm
And then we will have to deal with our political leaders who have been coddling Islam, if not outright supporting it, and thereby making such attacks possible.
This phenomenon is happening across the Western world. Remember Mark Steyn’s prosecution in Canada? Then there was Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, who was prosecuted for speaking the truth about the life of Mohammad. (Most Americans have never heard of her unless they read Gates of Vienna.)
Recently a man in England was arrested at a demonstration for reading Churchill’s famous quote about Islam. He was charged with “inciting religious hatred” or some such thing.
An Englishman arrested for quoting Churchill. Let that sink in.
We in America aren’t far behind, when Tea Partiers who revere the Constitution and the Founding Fathers are condemned as “racist”.
Our own political leaders have taken sides against us, and they will one day have to be dealt with, one way or another.
neo …
Totten is lost right off the bat: Salafism was a radical movement consequent to the Sepoy Mutiny in INDIA.
It had absolutely NOTHING to do with Turkey or the Middle East, generally.
The British Army put down the mutiny. The primary fanatics fled West, decamping to Salaf — a city — IIRC.
From that no-man’s-land, (anarchy) they hit the books { Koran, Hadiths } and started up a writing campaign that was vaguely echoed the Committees of Correspondence of the American Revolution… basically trying an Muslim-Indian version of our revolution.
That didn’t quite get rolling — while it did get the British actively concerned.
Ultimately the Salafists created their own school of rage, hate and doctrine. While their primary beef was with the British, their doctrine was fully applicable to the Turks.
It was Salafist rage that Lawrence of Arabia tapped.
Of course, being Muslims, their politics are a parody of American republican democracy… which they entirely reject, BTW.
George Pal said:
“Though unindicted co-conspirators, i.e., Western officialdom , apologists, appeasers, dispensationalists — as in Rotherham — remain at large, free to reassure us it had nothing to do with Islam.”
That’s probably the hardest part with these attacks nowadays. Most of us who have witnessed the recent progression of jihadi attacks, from Bin Laden through to the non-stop, murderous ISIS & Boko Haram, have no trouble identifying them and the common sense (and survival instincts) to see what needs to be done. Who here took one look at that flag and thought, “Oh great, another jihadi here to kill infidels?”
And yet time and again we are treated to feigned ignorance by the media and politicians that these attacks are related to a particular religion or a greater war on the West/Christian genocide. And worse, they insist that we must further submit, by instead focusing on preventing imaginary retaliatory attacks, allowing more mosques be built, and more sensitivity training be given to law enforcement agencies.
It’s a very painful, slow-motion cultural suicide. How do we stop the enablers?
Well, if President Barack H. Obama were the leader of Australia, he would know just how to resolve this issue.
It’s an obvious case of “Workplace Violence” if ever there were one. Anyone suggesting differently is a bigoted hate-monger.
Case closed.
Mark Steyn talks about him being a member of Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves. Pretty funny.