That's a wrap
We were promised Man Haron Monis’ associates; we got a former house mate, the guy who cut his hair, and a refugee who met the Sydney siege gunman for about 10 minutes one time in 2010.
Alas, Monis was a man with few friends, and so the picture we’re getting is a frustratingly limited one. Nonetheless, here’s what we learned on Wednesday:
- Monis would keep his room locked, a former house mate has told the inquest, and banned any people from visiting the house. He asked his house mate not to answer the door if someone knocked.
- Monis would borrow money from the former house mate, Amin Khademi, and once asked him to paint a Yagoona warehouse for him free of charge. “He would just say I need money, but he wouldn’t give a reason,” Khademi said.
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The gunman, who claimed to be a senior cleric in Iran, sometimes misstated basic Islamic blessings, according to Hassan Ammar, a Muslim Australian who reached out to Monis when he first arrived in the country. Ammar concluded that Monis was “full of ....”
- An Iraqi former refugee, who was visited by the gunman in Villawood detention centre in 2010, said Monis instructed him and other asylum seekers: “Just be patient inside, don’t make trouble, I think you will get your visa as soon as possible”.
- Monis had a bank of cameras set up inside the office in which he conducted his “spiritual healing” business, his former barber has said. He told the barber, Anthony Hancock, “he did white magic and spells but only good magic, white magic”, the inquest heard.
- The cousin of Monis’s girlfriend at the time of the siege said his introduction to their family was awkward because he avoided answering questions and refused to be photographed. The cousin eventually grew suspicious enough to call the immigration department and the anti-terrorism hotline. “We would leave there feeling awkward, suspicious, like this guy was hiding something, but we didn’t know what,” she said.
And that concludes the evidence for this first segment of the inquest into the deaths at the Lindt Cafe last December. Thanks for keeping up with our coverage. The next segment opens in August, and we’ll be back to live-blog it. Later I’ll sit down with my colleague Monica Tan to chat about what we heard today, do listen in.
Apologies once again, there’s little I can report of what we’re hearing due to a non-publication order. But don’t get Tim Wilson on the line just yet - we aren’t hearing anything that hasn’t been said before.
Sixth witness
We’re back from lunch with one witness remaining, unfortunately I’m being told I can’t reveal anything that might identify them. That’s going to make live-blogging their testimony difficult, but I’ll press on.
Updated
After Monis’ former partner was murdered, his girlfriend’s family were visited by police and “the secrets were unveiled”. “Our relationship deteriorated with my cousin,” she says.
It had already been strained by Monis’ girlfriend’s appearance in a video spitting on the Australian flag and bragging about writing letters to the families of deceased soldiers. The girlfriend’s cousin and her brother are both veterans.
We took great offence to that, we said we’ve actually served in the Australian army and you’re spitting in your face, your cousin’s face.
The clincher for Monis’ girlfriend’s cousin was when she picked up a camera and took a picture of him. “I just couldn’t resist, to see if we could dig deeper to see who this guy was,” she says.
Monis’ girlfriend grabbed the camera and deleted the photo. “So that convinced us he was definitely hiding something,” she says.
Her sister called the National Security Hotline, but was advised “he wasn’t a threat because there was no outside travel, he didn’t meet the checklist”.
It’s not clear when this was, but Monis appeared on Asio watchlists in 2008 and 2009, before falling off the list.
Another time they called the department of immigration, “suspecting he may have been an illegal immigrant because of his behaviour”.
We had no doubt my cousin was madly in love with this man. Kissing, hugging, you could tell they were very much in love.
Monis did not make a great impression on his girlfriend’s large, tight-knit family. “We weren’t allowed to question him. My cousin made it clear [they were] uncomfortable with the kinds of questions we were asking him, and to move on,” her cousin says.
Questioning him was difficult. What do you do for work? she asked “I’m an accountant.” Where? “Oh just for different people.”
No direct answers, which always made us suspicious ... We slowly learned not to push his buttons.
We approached my aunty and said there’s something wrong here, this guy isn’t letting us photograph, he’s not answering basic questions.
And she said no that’s probably his religion, they don’t take photos.
We would leave there feeling awkward, suspicious, like this guy was hiding something, but we didn’t know what.
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The fact of Monis’ Muslim faith caused fissures in his girlfriend’s family.
The introduction was very awkward when we first met, because he was a Muslim. And the family had to make a decision if we would accept the Muslim faith. And at that time, the cousins on my aunty’s side said they didn’t accept it, so they wouldn’t be allowed to visit.
We made a decision that we would accept him so we could continue seeing my uncle.
She remembers Monis being “very quiet”.
We basically didn’t have a lot of conversations directly with him, it was all through my cousin ... the basic conversation when we did meet were very general.
Updated
Fifth witness
Now in the box is the cousin of Monis’ girlfriend when he died. That’s the most I can tell you about her because of a court order.
She says the girlfriend was introduced to Monis by her own mother in 2008, “who was very keen to see my cousin married and financially secure before she died”.
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The last Hancock saw of Monis was July 2013, when he turned up with his new partner to look at some furniture Hancock was selling.
By that time Monis had asked Hancock to stop calling him Michael Hayson. “Just call me Man, Man Monis,” Hancock recalled him saying.
In 2005, Monis asked Hancock if he could begin shaving his head at the clairvoyant’s Burwood apartment, which doubled as his workplace.
It was set up as an office, so there was a desk, phone, a lounge, the big screen TV, a camera on a tripod and other cameras in the room.
Hancock asked why there were so many camera in the room.
I film many of the sessions, he said, he did white magic and spells but only good magic, white magic, and that he would film both sessions.
The pair had dinner “a few times over six months” with Hancock’s family and Monis’ fiance, Noleen Pal.
I felt though that I knew more about Noleen in five minutes that I did getting to know Michael over a couple of years.
He said Monis, who would change phone numbers “every two to three weeks”, claimed to have a PhD in Islamic philosophy and asked that he be addressed as Dr Michael Hayson.
Monis would often sleep in the Burwood apartment, away from his then-partner Noleen, who lived at her family’s home. Hancock asked why Monis slept away from his wife so often. Monis replied:
Well business is business, my wife trusts me and she must not question me about where I am or what I do.
Updated
For the first six months he didn’t really say anything, he was polite, but when I tried to engage in conversation with him it was yes or no answers.
Six months after he first started coming there he opened up and became a little more friendly. He didn’t know much about me either and then one day he found out the woman I was working with I was actually married to ... from that moment on he just seemed to be a lot more friendly and open.
Monis, then calling himself Michael Hayson , told Hancock he was Egyptian with a Greek mother. It took about seven months for Monis to reveal he worked as a clairvoyant.
Even though he had opened up and become more friendly, he was still very secretive. He didn’t want to talk all that much.
Fourth witness: Anthony Hancock
Morning tea finished, it’s Anthony Hancock in the box. He’s a bespectacled barber who began seeing Monis in August 2002. “He came in twice a week for a head shave with a razor,” he says.
Updated
Three years ago, while he was detained in Villawood detention centre, he was visited by an interfaith delegation that included Man Haron Monis.
Monis, “dressed like a sheikh in the mosque”, addressed some of the asylum seekers in Persian:
He said ... just be patient inside, don’t make trouble, I think you will get your visa as soon as possible.
Our prophet before they had been in the jail, the detention centre, so just be patient.
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Third witness
Now up is an Iraqi refugee who I’m not allowed to name - for fear there might be ramifications for his family back home. In any case, he arrived in Australia in January 2010. He was detained for three months on Christmas Island, then sent to Villawood for 16 months. Then he was released. Now he works as a car detailer in Regent’s Park. His wife and one of his sons remain in Iraq.
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Monis apparently tried to feel out where Ammar and his friend stood on the topic of Iran’s rulers. He told them the night before he had been visited by representatives of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, an opposition group in exile.
He made a poor impression on Ammar.
He was always talking from head high, as if he was something big. He was implying he was pretty much at the centre of something big.
Monis went to say a blessing to the men but apparently flubbed it. Ammar says the blessing was something all Muslims know – “like the ABCs of the religion”.
After he made the mistake in those verses, I didn’t think he was a priest.
What was your impression of him? Gormly asks.
He was full of...
Updated
Ammar and a friend first noticed Monis when he was chained to the gates of the New South Wales parliament house in 1996. He told them a familiar story:
At first he said he had two daughters held by the Iranian regime. But then he started talking big, he had secrets about the regime, that he was going to destroy the regime or make a coup. He knew so much about the regime that he had enough to take it down, that’s what he was claiming at the time.
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Second witness: Hassan Ammar
Now in the box is Hassan Ammar, a Sydney cab driver since 1991. In fact he’s wearing his taxi company’s jacket right now. Ammar, of Lebanese origin, describes himself as politically active, helping among other things to broker community harmony in the aftermath of the Cronulla riots.
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In 2008, Monis showed Khademi his infamous website, sheikhharon.com. It didn’t go well.
I just saw photo of Osama bin Laden ... There was two woman, but only the face appeared, and they were talking in English, I didn’t understand what they were talking about and I got upset.
What about the website upset you? Gormly asks.
First of all Bin Laden’s photo itself. And then he talked about sending letters to the families of Australian soldiers in Australia, and that was the subject that made me upset.
Gormly: Did you say anything to him?
Yes I did, I told him what you’re doing is wrong and he didn’t say anything.
Updated
This is unlikely to come as a shock, but Monis was a pretty terrible guy to be friends with. For one thing, he asked for money. A lot of it.
“Two times he asked me to send money to his mother,” Khademi says. In total he gave Monis’ mother about $2,500.
Here’s the exchange between Khademi and Jeremy Gormly, SC:
Gormly: Did he ever repay the money to you?
Khademi: He was supposed to but he didn’t ... And he used to come and ask for money in cash, like $1,000.
G: Did you give it to him?
K: Yes
G: Did he give you a reason why he wanted the money?
K: No, he would just say I need money, but he wouldn’t give a reason.
He also asked Khademi, a painter by trade, to help him paint a warehouse in Yagoona. Khademi tells the inquest that Monis did little to help with the painting. Nor did he pay Khademi anything for the job.
Updated
Khademi is still in the box. He says that after his family arrived from Iran he moved out of the flat he shared with Monis. They kept in touch but still knew little about the man. One day he dropped the bombshell that he had a wife and kids in Iran.
And I ask, ‘How old are the children?’ And he says, ‘One of them is eight and the other is about four.’ We all got shocked. Because we thought he was single and had no relationship with anyone.
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Latest podcast
All throughout this inquest my colleagues Monica Tan, Bridie Jabour and I have been sitting down to reflect on what we’ve heard. Find the latest episode here. The podcast is produced by Fred McConnell.
Monis spent about six months in Perth. Last December, the day after the siege, I interviewed a few people who knew him in Western Australia. Here’s what they told me:
In the early 2000s Monis decamped to Perth, where sources say he worked briefly as a nightclub bouncer and as labourer in a Persian carpet gallery.
His exploits in Sydney and flair for activism quickly became known.
A local Iranian radio producer was asked to feature Monis in an upcoming program, and he invited the self-styled intellectual for lunch at his home.
“He was a little bit serious, and polite, talking about the different clerics in Iran and all this,” the producer recalled.
But he quickly grew tired of Monis’ erratic, convoluted train of thought. “He was talking weird. I thought, he’s either over-educated or a crazy person,” he recalled.
Monis’ claims about the Iranian government detaining his wife and child concerned the producer, who regularly returns to visit family in the Iran, and didn’t want to risk making trouble. He finished the interview, thanked Monis and never saw him again. “I threw out the tape,” he said.
Monis was also dogged by allegations that he had been involved in a hundred-thousand dollar fraud in Iran, an allegation some British-based Iranian news outlets have repeated since his death. The rumours reached the owner of the Perth carpet gallery where Monis worked.
“When I realised about that, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him,” he said. “It isn’t like he needed the money.”
The man said it was clear that Monis had emotional difficulties. “He was up one day and down the next. One time he’d go to the discotheque, another time he was saying he was a representative of God,” he said.
But he was still surprised to see the bloody way Monis’ life ended.
“He was always look for someone’s attention. He was an attention seeker. I didn’t think he was the sort of man who would go in and murder someone,” he said.
Khademi visited Monis while the gunman lived in Perth. Monis made it easy, paying for the plane ticket. Khademi says Monis lived in a house with a view of the ocean, double story with two rooms. The top floor was his. “It was a nice beautiful house,” Khademi says.
Monis told Khademi he used to assist the Iranian intelligence services but fell out with them. As a result he felt threatened. “I don’t want to be in touch with anyone here,” Khademi recalls Monis saying.
What was Monis like as a housemate? Not great.
“He just asked me that I’m not allowed to bring any friends over,” Khademi says.
More rules:
If someone knocks on the door you’re not allowed to open the door.
He had one room to himself and the door was always locked.
Khademi didn’t like these rules, particularly the one about bringing his friends over. It wasn’t a problem for Monis he said because he never had any friends visit him once in the six months they lived together.
Khademi tells the inquest he met Monis – then calling himself Mohammed Manteghi – in late 1998 through another friend. Monis, who identified himself as an Iranian cleric, soon invited Khademi to move into a spare bedroom in his Auburn flat.
They lived together for six months before Monis packed his bags for Perth.
First witness: Amin Khademi
First up is Amin Khademi, who is listed as an old housemate of Man Haron Monis. He’s a ruffled figure with dark hair and a slight grey beard. He will be testifying through a Farsi interpreter.
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Vandal attack on Lindt cafe
Police will look through CCTV footage hoping to track down a vandal who smashed several windows at the Lindt cafe in Martin Place, scene of the Sydney siege in December.
At least five rocks were hurled through the windows of the cafe early on Wednesday.
Witnesses say a man was loitering at the time of the attack.
“We believe a man in his 40s with facial hair and tanned skin may be able to assist with inquiries,” a New South Wales police spokeswoman said.
An inquest into the siege, in which hostages Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson and gunman Man Haron Monis died, is set to continue in Sydney on Wednesday.
The Lindt cafe closed for several months after the siege and reopened in March.
Details are obviously still unclear, but when police reveal more we’ll bring it to you here.
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Welcome
So far in this inquest into the deaths of Tori Johnson, Katrina Dawson, and Man Haron Monis, we’ve heard from the Sydney siege gunman’s lawyers, from business partners, and from social workers who assessed him. Much less has been heard from those we might call Monis’ friends - what the inquest calls associates - which is what makes today notable.
Over the next few hours we’ll hear from six people who knew Monis personally, who might help us unravel the mystery of this enigmatic and dangerous man. Their evidence will build on what we heard on Tuesday from Amanda Morsy, a woman Monis courted for six months in 2003.
Far from the austere preacher some have recalled, the Monis she knew drank alcohol, wore Western clothes, lived in a Cronulla apartment, and most bizarrely, drove at least three cars with number plates customised in his initials. You can catch up on that evidence here.
Listen also to this 10-minute podcast my colleagues Bridie Jabour,Monica Tan and I have been recorded at the end of each hearing day. You can download every episode so far from the iTunes library here.
