Questions over a phone call made by the New South Wales police deputy commissioner on the night of the Sydney Lindt cafe siege have dominated senior officers’ first day of evidence at the coronial inquest.
Catherine Burn, the state’s head of counter-terrorism, took the stand following evidence from the acting deputy commissioner, Jeff Loy, earlier in Monday.
The two senior officers, along with commissioner Andrew Scipione, have denied giving any key operational guidance, directions or advice during the standoff at the Lindt cafe at Martin Place in December 2014.
The fourth and final stage of the long-running inquest is attempting to determine whether any of the three inappropriately intruded, or failed to interfere when they ought to have.
Burn was questioned over a phone call she made late on the night of 15 December to Mark Jenkins, the police commander, after she had received an inquiry from a journalist with regards to the identity of the gunman, Man Haron Monis, which had not yet been made public.
Burn called Jenkins – who was in charge of the final moments of the 17-hour siege – to clarify whether Monis’ name was being deliberately withheld from the media.
She had held media briefings earlier that day and considered herself to “have a high level of what was occurring” but “completely rejected” that she might later have made any suggestion about the negotiation strategy during the call to Jenkins.
“I would not interfere,” she said in response to questioning from the counsel assisting the state coroner, Jeremy Gormly SC. “I just don’t accept that.”
The inquest had heard earlier that attempts to retrieve text messages she had sent during the siege but subsequently deleted had so far been unsuccessful.
Burn said she did not know how many texts relating to the siege she deleted.
“To my knowledge or recollection none of the texts I had were texts I thought I needed to keep,” she said. “If they can be recovered that would be good … I would prefer that to be the case and that we can recover them.”
Scipione would be called to give evidence later this week.
Earlier Loy had told of receiving an email from the NSW police commissioner shortly before midnight on 15 December about a hostage video posted on YouTube.
“Let’s move to have it pulled down from YouTube immediately. I’ll leave it to you and others,” Scipione said in the email to Loy, Jenkins and a police public relations officer, including a link to the clip.
Loy told the inquest he didn’t consider the email to be a directive.
“At the time I didn’t make the connection that the commissioner would have been interfering.”
Loy was managing the emergency response to the siege and acting as a conduit between the police operations commander and state crisis centre. But he told the coroner, Michael Barnes, he played no role in strategic or operational decisions.
The siege reached its deadly conclusion at around 2.14am on December 16, when officers stormed the stronghold and killed Monis after cafe manager Tori Johnson was shot dead.
Another hostage, Katrina Dawson, was fatally wounded during the police assault.
The inquest continues.
• Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
