Thursday has been a stop-start kind of day, but the last couple of hours have seen some interesting revelations. The inquest has just adjourned for the day, so let’s recap:
- Detective senior constable Melanie Staples has revealed the frantic efforts in the first hours of the siege to share information of Man Haron Monis, who by around midday on 15 December was suspected to be the gunman holding up the Lindt Cafe.
- Staples wrote a letter to the DPP laying out her concerns about Monis being granted bail in December 2013. However, after the letter was seemingly ignored (in truth, it appears never to have been sent) she conceded she made no further attempt to raise her concerns regarding Monis. She told the inquest she assumed “a decision had been made not to” heed her calls for Monis’ bail to be challenged.
- Staples was extremely critical of the DPP solicitor (name redacted) who ran Monis’ December 2013 bail hearing. Her superiors received the impression - likely from Staples - that the solicitor had done a “terrible job”. She walked that back a little on Thursday, claiming some of their submissions were good, and that the magistrate in the case was not particularly open to their arguments.
- The office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has succeeded in keeping secret key documents that outline perceived errors in the way one of their solicitors handled Man Haron Monis’ application for bail in December 2013.
As with much of today’s evidence, what we’re hearing right now is covered by a suppression order and cannot be discussed.
But Staples apparently felt that blame lay elsewhere, namely with the DPP solicitor who argued the case - and apparently made it known. One of her superiors reported that he heard the solicitor “was terrible and clearly not across the brief”.
Today she’s walking that view back a little. “In my opinion there were further things that could have been put before the court during that hearing,” she says.
“I appreciated throughout the process that [the solicitor] was in a difficult position to be in.”
She adds that on re-reading the transcript of the hearing, she believes the solicitor actually did okay.
[Their] submissions concerning the facts on Mr Monis were good. [They] presented ... the salient points of the Crown case. Obviously there were difficulties, the magistrate was rejecting whole aspects of the case.
And yet, Buchanan says, Staples “dropped [the DPP solicitor] in it with your superiors”.
I accept what you’re saying but I did have concerns in relation to material that [they] didn’t put before the court on that day.
She admits that after the hearing she was “very upset” - refusing to speak with the solicitor or making eye contact with them. Certainly, she didn’t ask them that day to challenge the magistrate’s decision to grant Monis bail.
What we’re watching is trench warfare between the DPP and police: intense fighting over each and every tiny decision made between December 2013 and October 2014 that added up to Monis being free last December.
Updated
David Buchanan SC, for the DPP, is reading from the notes from the court officer on the day Monis appeared in December 2013.
They appear to show that the magistrate was unsympathetic to the DPP’s efforts to have Monis refused bail. The DPP solicitor, who cannot be named, seemed “up against it”, Buchanan suggests.
“Yes, I agree with you,” Staples says.
Buchanan also reports that the court officer said “he had never seen the magistrate repeatedly interrupt submissions in this way”.
Police knew by midday on day of siege that Monis may have been gunman
A fascinating exchange just now between Gabrielle Bashir SC and detective senior constable Staples. The policewoman had been investigating Monis for more than a year when he staged the siege on 15 December. Within a few hours of the siege commencing she began to suspect the gunman was Monis. Here’s what happened next--
Bashir: You become aware that police suspected it was Mr Monis in the cafe.
Yes.
B: Do you remember what time that was?
It was shortly before midday ... I reported my suspicions directly to the commander at the homicide squad, that I believed it was Monis at the cafe.
B: You were, I believe, providing a steady stream of information to the commander at homicide, is that right?
Yes, and the intelligence manager asked me to collate some material that could be accessed by the relevant police, looking into that matter in town.
B: So we can take it that police who were responsible for the matter in town, as you call it, knew that that person in the cafe had been charged with murder as accessory before the fact?
Yes.
Staples says that by 1pm police were given an intelligence profile that had been created a year before, which included a summary of Monis’ criminal history, a psychological report, and photographs. It had been prepared before Monis was charged with being an accessory to murder, she says, “but it did particularise that he was a POI for strike force crocker and an outline of the murder itself”.
Staples said on Wednesday that she had drafted a letter to the DPP requesting that the court’s decision to grant Monis bail be challenged. For reasons that are still unclear, that letter was never sent.
We’ve seen evidence of a meeting Staples held with her superiors, where notes appear to indicate that Staples understood the letter had been sent.
As a result, Staples made no attempt at Monis’ subsequent court appearances in April, May and October 2014 to voice her concerns that the gunman was being freed.
“I was of the understanding that a letter seeking a bail review had gone from the police to the DPP and my assumption, rightly or wrongly, was that if it had been received then consideration had been given to that,” she said.
“I assumed, again rightly or wrongly, that a decision had been made not to.”
Meanwhile, Staples had been collecting evidence that showed Monis had a “a propensity to lie” to the court, as well as a psychological assessment of the man. None of that was ever presented in court.
Det. Staples returns to the box
Finally, we have a witness on the stand. It’s detective senior constable Melanie Staples from the NSW homicide squad.
We’ve just received the written judgment from NSW coroner Michael Barnes regarding the release of six key documents. In short: legal professional privilege has been maintained for four documents, but lifted for two; one of which we can’t report, the other we discussed here.
A brief interlude for lunch here. Let’s recap:
- The office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has succeeded in keeping secret key documents that outline apparent errors in the way one of their solicitors handled Man Haron Monis’ application for bail in December 2013.
- One document that was released cannot be reported because it is covered by a suppression order.
- That’s sure to disappoint the family of Tori Johnson, who were among those applying for those documents to be made public, arguing that otherwise lawyers would be interrogating witnesses “with hands tied behind our backs”.
Updated
Privilege waived on some documents, but not others
The coroner has ruled that legal professional privilege should be waived on some of the documents in question, but not others. We’re waiting on a copy of the judgment for more details.
I’ve just obtained the letter written by detective senior constable Melanie Staples, from the homicide squad, outlining all the reasons Man Haron Monis should have been denied bail in December 2013.
Among the reasons she gave was the Monis was facing a significant custodial sentence (for being an accessory before and after a murder); that he was the “mastermind” behind the alleged murder; that he was likely to interfere with witnesses; and that he had attended the home of one of his alleged victims tailed by two bikers (in the brief period in 2013 he ran with the Rebels motorcycle gang).
As we heard yesterday, Staples believed this document had been passed onto the DPP solicitor running the case - but for reasons that remain a mystery, it appears it was never sent.
Updated
Inquest awaiting judgment from coroner on redacted emails
We’re still awaiting a judgment from coroner Michael Barnes on whether legal privilege should be waived on a series of email communications between the police and DPP.
Gabrielle Bashir SC, appearing for Tori Johnson’s family, has said the emails need to be released or else the silks will be questioning key witnesses “with hands tied behind our backs”.
Updated
This squabbling over whether communications between the DPP and the police ought to be released to the public has taken us to the morning break.
Right now those emails are marked “redacted” in the evidence made available to the media. Should that change on Thursday we will immediately bring you their contents.
Counsel assisting, Jeremy Gormly SC, is making a submission that communications between the DPP and the police should not be subject to legal professional privilege, that is to say, kept secret.
“There’s no fight over who gets a private benefit,” he says. “There is a real public benefit to all of these documents being disclosed.”
The communications lay out the case the police made to the DPP to challenge Monis’ bail application. The barristers for the families of Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson - both killed in the siege - are particularly eager for this information to be made public.
Gormly is saying that if the DPP choose not to waive legal professional privilege, it should “articulate a reason for adopting that position”.
Updated
While we wait:
- Catch up on Wednesday’s coverage as it happened
- Read our wrap of the day’s evidence
- Listen to our daily podcast, in which we unpack the most interesting bits of the day, including the revelation that agents from Asio, Australia’s spy agency, were present at every court appearance Monis made between 2013-14
Thursday
Welcome to our continuing coverage of the Sydney siege inquest.
Wednesday heard explosive evidence from a senior homicide detective, Melanie Staples, who discovered that Man Haron Monis had committed at least two serious offences whilst on bail for sending offensive letters to the widows and family of deceased soldiers.
Ordinarily that information would have been enough to see the gunman’s liberty revoked - potentially putting him behind bars at the time of the siege last December.
Staples passed this information to a solicitor from the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions - but it was never presented to the court. (Not then, nor on two subsequent court appearances.)
Why not? And would it have made a difference? Those are some of the questions we’re hoping to answer in Thursday’s hearing.
It kicks off shortly.
