Richard Ackland Tuesday 16 December 2014
Facing over 40 charges and known to be threateningly unstable, Man Haron Monis had been granted bail three times in the past 12 months. Did the law fail?
‘This man was known to be threateningly unstable, so we are entitled to ask why a firmer grip wasn’t applied to him, given the lavish powers at the disposal of counter-terrorism agencies.’ Photograph: AAP
The post-siege process underway includes a torrent of indignation, fused with the brilliance of hindsight.
For the families of those killed the grief is insurmountable. Other victims will be traumatised for a long time.
And there’s the questioning about the circumstances of the now dead hostage taker, Man Haron Monis. He was many things: a deranged bigot, with extreme religious beliefs, who posed a risk to the community. That is not the sum of him at all, but for these purposes it is enough.
As we know, at the time of his attack in Sydney’s Martin Place he was on bail in relation to two sets of alleged offences: as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife and for over 40 sexual assault charges against seven women.
He was also known to the security authorities since 2007 when he engaged in a spree of hate letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, which he described as a “condolence card”.
In 2008 there were reports that Shia leader Kamal Mousselmani urged the AFP to investigate Monis’s bogus claims to be a spiritual leader with the name Sheikh Haron.
A Tehran-based journalist, Sadegh Ghorbani, claimed in Tweets on Tuesday that Iranian authorities repeatedly warned Australian authorities about Monis’s mental condition.
So he would have been on official radar screens for at least seven years and more likely 12 years after he arrived as a refugee from Iran in 1996.
It is at this point that the indignation mounts. Why was such a person outside the walls of a prison? How come he fell through the cracks in the criminal justice system? Why wasn’t the security apparatus more vigilant?
Hindsight makes us wonderfully wise. If the various judicial officers, through whose hands Monis passed, had an inkling that such a tragedy was to unfold they would no doubt have responded accordingly.
Magistrate Bill Pierce granted the accused bail on charges relating to accessory to murder. He found that the crown case was weak, that prosecution witnesses gave conflicting statements and that there was alibi evidence.
It is claimed Monis went to considerable efforts to plant a false trail in relation to the murder of his ex-wife. He is said to have concocted a heart attack on the day of the murder and set up a sham robbery of his flat which he reported on the same day.
Despite these claims, the magistrate set bail with conditions, including reporting daily to the police, being ordered to live at a place in Belmore and depositing $10,000 cash with the court. That was December 2013.
The following month, a 27-year-old woman complained to the police that Monis had sexually assaulted her. He was charged in April with three sexual assaults and refused bail. Then in May he was granted bail with roughly the same conditions imposed on him last December for the accessory case.
Following a police investigation he was charged in October with 40 sexual assault offences in relation to six women and bail was continued with an appearance due in Penrith Local Court on December 12, a date that was vacated and set at February 27, 2015.
We don’t know the exact details of the reasons behind the continuation of December’s bail in May and October. All we know is that magistrates are obliged to apply the law and usually take care to do so, otherwise they’ll be overturned higher up the judicial food chain.
The crown does not appear to have appealed against these bail determinations. Guardian Australia asked the office of the DPP to confirm this. It says it is still trying to check whether this is so.
This year’s amendments to the Bail Act, which apply stricter conditions to the grant of bail, haven’t come into effect yet, largely because the law and justice people are still trying to muddle out how the new model will work.
None of which will still a considerable amount of media and political law-and-order demagoguery.
What then of the gilded security apparatus that operates virtually as a state within a state – secretive, relatively unaccountable and bolstered by extravagant political patronage?
This man was known to be threateningly unstable, so we are entitled to ask why a firmer grip wasn’t applied to him, given the lavish powers at the disposal of counter-terrorism agencies.
The point about security people is that they are forever asking for bigger and better powers and this is granted by politicians anxious for insurance policies against nothing dreadful happening on their patch.
The latest round of beefed-up national security amendments was attended by proclamations from the attorney-general, Senator George Brandis, that “the most pressing gaps in our counter-terrorism legislative framework” have now been closed.
It is a claim that attends each new manifestation of counter-terrorism law.
At the disposal of the AFP in circumstances such as these are control orders and preventative detention orders.
Control orders can apply for up to 12 months, require a person to wear a tracking device and impose geographical restrictions and reporting conditions.
A preventative detention order (PDO) under Commonwealth law allows someone to be detained without charge for a maximum of 48 hours. However, they cannot be questioned.
Interestingly, the previous independent national security legislation monitor, Bret Walker, reported that PDOs are “worse than useless” because detainees cannot be questioned. “They are more trouble then they are worth,” he said.
The NSW Ombudsman recently found that the preventative detention laws in that state had never been used by the police between 2011 and 2013. However, within the month the Supreme Court had issued orders that three men be held without charge as part of September’s counter terrorism raids.
The amendments this September loosened the grounds on which applications can be made for these orders and extended the sunset provisions for a further 10 years.
It could be argued that the amendments and the accompanying chest beating from Brandis does nothing in terms of enhancing the counter-terror agencies’ capacity to hold or control someone like Monis without charge.
Nor would the proposed data retention scheme have helped. If the gunman in Martin Place was off the radar electronically, why would a programme under which the entire country can be put under surveillance make any difference?
Monis clearly learned his lesson after he was charged with sending offensive mail through the post. He said that from now on he should send his letters by “hand delivery”.
No doubt ASIO, the AFP and others will be back for another helping of gap-closing pudding and in the process, once again, will be raised the question about where lies the balance between a free society and one in which the shadow of the state is too pervasive.
- This article originally stated that Magistrate Bill Pearce granted Man Haron Monis bail. The relevant magistrate’s name is in fact Bill Pierce.
