Australia Announces an Investigation Into the Sydney Siege, Then Has to Investigate the Announcement

The Australian government on Wednesday announced an investigation into the events that allowed Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis, an individual with an extensive criminal past, to walk the streets. They didn't expect the first thing they'd have to do was investigate their own announcement.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and New South Wales State Premier Mike Baird, held a joint press conference on Wednesday evening announcing one of the broadest inquiries in the country's history. Everything from the intelligence services, law enforcement, the judiciary, prison authorities, welfare departments and immigration will be examined.

"We do need to know what this individual was doing with a gun license," said Abbott. "We particularly need to know how someone with such a long record of violence, such a long record of mental instability was out on bail after his involvement in a particularly horrific crime. And we do need to know why he seems to have fallen off our security agencies' watch list back in about 2009."

The only problem was that within minutes, New South Wales police confirmed Monis didn't have a gun license.

Breaking - OFFICIAL: — Hugh Riminton (@hughriminton)December 17, 2014

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) had briefed the prime minister incorrectly. The government quickly promised to investigate how the announcement of the investigation went so wrong.

"The AFP Commissioner is investigating the origins of the entry on the National Police Reference System," said the prime minister's office in a statement. "All matters relating to the perpetrator's access to firearms will be investigated as part of the review announced today."

The review will report back within six weeks. It will also investigate how Monis was given permanent residency, citizenship and welfare payments. But still, the question of how a man like Monis obtained a gun, in a country where gun ownership is stringently controlled, is a priority.

"How was a gun so easily available to him?" Zaky Mallah, the first Australian to ever be charged with terrorism offenses, said in an interview with VICE News. "He had a sawn off shotgun. Where did he get that? When I bought my rifle in 2002 I had it less than 24 hours before the counter-terrorism squad raided my house and I was arrested. And I did not have half the background this guy has, I didn't have any real history."

Mallah was charged under Australia's anti-terror laws in 2002, at the age of 20, after threatening to kill Australian diplomatic and intelligence staff. He served two years over his threats, but was eventually acquitted of terrorism related charges.

Now he is a voice against extremism. In fact, it has been reported police contacted him to try and source an Islamic State flag for Monis during the siege, to fulfill the gunman's demands.

"It's not like the counter-terror squad have one hanging on the wall," said Mallah.

Monis, unlike Mallah, had an extensive criminal history. In fact at the time of the siege, he was facing charges on 50 counts of sexual assault beginning in 2002, when he offered women services as a "spiritual healer" in Sydney's Western suburbs, only to allegedly abuse them.

He had previously fought extended legal battles over a letter writing campaign against the families of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2009.

Most disturbingly, Monis was actually out on bail at the time of the siege on charges of being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife, Noleen Hayson Pal. Pal was stabbed 18 times and set on fire outside a western Sydney apartment building, according to court documents.

The accused in the murder was Monis' new girlfriend, Amirah Droudis.

A year before the murder, Pal had told a separate court hearing that Monis had threatened to kill her.

Manny Conditsis, one of his former lawyers, spoke to ABC radio about his state of mind

"Knowing he was on bail for very serious offences, knowing that while he was in custody some terrible things happened to him, I thought he may consider that he's got nothing to lose," Conditsis said of Monis. "He was put through, let's say, some very unpleasant events, involving matters of excrement over himself and his cell."

Whether the incident Conditsis described did occur is still in question, but there is no doubt Monis was concerned about his chances of escaping jail time. Bizarre statements retrieved from a cached copy of his website give some insight into his state of mind.

"The sexual case against this activist," Monis wrote sometime in the last couple of months, "is similar to the false accusation against the activist Julian Assange which was a political case."

"God willing Man Haron Monis will not stop his political activity against oppression and also he does not care if his image will be damaged amongst the community as he believes it is not important what people think about him."

In the rambling communiqués, often written in the third person, he lists people he intends to read his messages including Abbott, US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and the "Muslim Community Around The World."

On the Friday before the hostage crisis, Monis' final application to the High Court of Australia to hear an appeal over his letter writing campaign was dismissed. His lawyer in the matter told ABC that it was "as a practical matter, probably" the end of the line for his case.

Ben Rich, of Monash University's Global Terrorism Research Center, said he believes men like Monis are a particularly difficult threat for security agencies.

"When the individual is mentally unstable, it's difficult to manage or predict that they could do something like this. Individuals are much more difficult to manage than an actual terror cell," Rich told VICE News. "In a cell scenario, there have to be communications, there have to be logistic organized, which are all the things security services rely on to monitor threats."

Shaun Filer, formerly of the US Marine Corp, is now a senior advisor for a private firm in Sydney, Dynamiq, handling crisis management and security.

"It just goes to show what one individual, with enough determination, can do with a weapon. It's very hard to prevent that from happening," Filer told VICE News.

Monis' state of mind and his looming legal issues, raise questions of whether the attack was an act of terrorism, or a criminal matter.

"Speaking to colleagues today," said Rich, "there aren't any of us who are comfortable labeling this attack as terrorism. There was no coherent political message and the attack was not in line with the broader ISIS message or strategy. What do we call it but an act of criminality?"

Mallah, who also traveled to frontlines in Syria in 2012 to help the rebel Free Syrian Army, is well placed to gauge the perspective of genuine Sunni Muslim radicals in the Sydney community.

"The Salafists [radical Sunnis] who do support IS are divided into two. The first group support Monis. They say, 'good on him, he's given his pledge Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi he's a martyr, well done'. For the other half, this guy is full of shit, he doesn't even represent the Sunni or Shiite faith. He doesn't represent anything, he is a fringe lunatic."

One of the most puzzling parts of the picture that is emerging is that Monis was actually a Shiite from Iran, declaring himself such on his website as recently as October. But Monis identified himself as representing the Islamic State during the siege. He apparently converted to Sunni Islam, the denomination of IS, the week before Monday's standoff.

"It's odd, you don't normally see this kind of rapid conversion," said Rich. "I've never come across it before. On the one hand, there's the idea doctrinally among groups like ISIS that they should accept Shia with open arms if they convert, but the battlefield realities haven't supported that. Instead you see them just slaughtering and persecuting groups like the Yazidis or the Kurds."

"Until now, I'm still unconvinced he really converted," said Mallah. "I think his association to Islamic State was an excuse for his rage and his anger, and to get added attention for the hostage taking because they're the big deal at the moment. Islamic State, Arab Sunnis, are the guys killing his own people. He's saying he's supporting people killing his own friends; his people."

If the wild swing from Shia to Sunni Islam was a fabrication by Monis, it would be the latest in a long list.

During a 2001 interview with the ABCheclaimed, "the Iranian regime wants to make me silent and — because I have some secret information about government and about their terrorist operations in the war."

The Iranian government had a different story. "In 1996, he was the manager of a travel agency and committed fraud," said Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, the head of the country's police, in an interview with local media. "He then fled to Malaysia, and from there, to Australia with a fake name. Following legal proceedings in the year 2000, our judiciary informed Interpol about his crime and demanded Australia extradite him. They claimed they did not have a criminal extradition agreement with Iran and refused to do so."

Cyyrous Sarang, an Australian-Iranian refugee advocate, told ABC that Monis claimed to him that he was "he was the secretary of the intelligence service from Iran." Sarang refused to help him with his case.

The government's review will have implications for issues ranging from immigration and welfare to intelligence and security. Australians hope it will also provide answers as to how Monis committed an attack that shook the country to its core.

Follow Scott Mitchell on Twitter: @s_mitchell