Did High Court loss trigger Monis siege?

‘I assure you that Sheikh Haron does not need a gun.’

In a 2008 video on Man Haron Monis’ website, in front of a screen with Monis’ web  address, a young woman in a black burka, with only her eyes revealed, spoke those words that now resonate with sad irony.

She goes on to criticise Nationwide News, The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, for daring to suggest that Islamic Jihad involves violence. In a script obviously written by Monis, there are assertions that violence is not the Islamic way.

A year later, 2009, the message is dramatically reversed. Another, probably older, woman, again in a black burka with only her eyes revealed, and again reading from a Monis script, says Muslims ...

‘ ... must submit to God’s will. Yes, we are happy about the punishment of September 11. Yes, we are happy about the punishment in Bali. Yes, we are happy about the punishment of the Holocaust and any other punishment that God sends us.’

So, Monis openly displayed his approval of violence against the United States and its citizens murdered en masse; approved equally of the mass murder of the citizens of the country, Australia, that had given him refuge; openly displayed his anti-Semitism in the worst possible way.

Between 2007 and 2009 Monis wrote inflammatory letters to the parents of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, calling the soldiers murderers. He was charged with an offence against the Posts and Telegraphs Act, using a postal service to cause offence. 

In 2011 Monis received legal aid to contest his conviction for writing these letters on the grounds that the letters were an instance of free speech. The case was to go all the way to the High Court at considerable taxpayer expense.

On Friday 12 December 2014 he received bad news. His action in the High Court was lost on a legal technicality after the six High Court judges were split 3-3 in their judgments on his case  (Monis v The Queen; Droudis v The Queen [2014] HCATrans 280 (12 December 2014).

It was after this bad news on the Friday that on Monday 15 December an armed Monis walked into the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, Sydney.

On 28 December 2014 on Radio 2GB, the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, questioned the rationale for Monis’ legal aid funding where it seemed taxpayers were ‘funding attacks on taxpayers’. Shortly after the siege he had called for a state-federal inquiry.

Much has also been rightly made of the fact that Monis was on bail regarding the other serious criminal cases  he was facing. His personal freedom on bail was surely a precondition for his siege. But, I suggest,  it is very likely the spark that lit the fuse for Monis’ siege at the Lindt cafe was in fact his loss on the technical, legal point in the High Court.

The one thing Monis still had going for him,  his last bit of credibility, was the High Court case. The prestigious case would have given him an inflated sense of his own importance.

If his hopes had not been extinguished in the High Court Friday 12 December the siege may not have occurred at all. Given his record of attention-seeking behaviour, he probably would have tried to turn what would have been, in the circumstances, a minor High Court success, into something more profound.

A likely conclusion is - no legal aid High Court case - no Monday 15 December attack.

Could this sequence of events been anticipated?

In 2009 Radio National’s religious affairs broadcaster, Rachael Kohn, published a pointed critique of Monis.

Referring to the videos cited above, she said: ‘The trouble is that Sheikh Haron, as he calls himself, can be seen to be a bit too loony to take seriously, but this is a mistake. The self-styled mufti is no shrinking violet when it comes to promoting hatred of the West and justifying violence in the name of Allah.’

Any reading of that critique, freely available on the internet, as were the videos cited above, would have given pause for thought about funding Monis all the way to the High Court. He was not facing gaol time on this particular charge. For her trouble, Rachael Kohn was threatened by Monis.

Whether he would have carried out an identical, or some other attack,  prior to his pending criminal cases, is an open question. No one could say with certainty that would have happened. I suggest that is a sobering thought.

Monis received taxpayer funding somewhere well north of $100,000, possibly as high as $300,000, to take his case through two lower courts and  then up to the High Court to make a constitutional point about free speech. Why?

There may have been a legal point to this case. But the decision to run it contrasts very badly with Monis’ prior public support for Islamic terrorism, not to mention later revelations concerning cuts to legal aid, causing the termination of  other complex criminal cases, leaving defendants floundering.

 (‘Cuts to legal aid hit NSW courts’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 February 2015)

On 19 January 2015 our Association (NSW Rationalists) submitted a Freedom of Information request to Legal Aid NSW asking for the reasons for their decision to fund Monis, and his partner, Amirah Droudis.

On 18 May they replied. They argued in part that under section 25(3) of theLegal Aid Commission Act 1979 they are not required to ‘divulge to any person or court any information or document ... relating to the administration of legal aid.’

Similarly, on 27 February 2015 the state-federal inquiry on Monis requested by the Prime Minister two days after the siege, was released. It came to a cul-de-sac concerning legal aid. It concluded ‘Appeals to the High Court are only made once advice is provided from Senior Counsel.’

What was that advice?  What were the justifications for the case vis-à-vis the many other pressing criminal matters Legal Aid NSW were funding?  Why was a blank taxpayers’ cheque written so that the free speech case of a public supporter of Islamic terrorism could be argued in the High Court? Where was the public interest in that? How much did it cost?

It is instructive that the Leader of the Opposition in NSW, John Robertson, recovering some integrity,resigned on 23 December 2014, eight days after Monis’ siege, after he conceded he had written a letter on Monis’ behalf concerning a family law matter.

But the reasons for the apparently myopic, foolhardy funding of the dangerous Monis in 2011 remain behind a wall of legalese and silence.

Some explanation as to why the man who caused this catastrophe was fêted by the legal system to go to the High Court should be sought by the Coroner’s inquiry.