Man Haron Monis could have been behind bars at the time of Sydney siege had police arrested him two months before, after he was charged with more than three dozen sex offences, an inquest has heard.
The New South Wales coroner is examining whether the gunman should have been out on bail when he staged the siege on 15 December last year.
Monis faced court in May 2014 charged with three sex offences related to his “spiritual healing” business. Neither police, prosecutors, nor the magistrate were aware he had allegedly committed the assaults while already on bail for sending offensive letters to the widows and families of deceased soldiers.
The inquest heard on Tuesday that an officer on the case, detective senior constable Denise Vavayis, was told that if fresh charges were laid and Monis were formally arrested again, there was a high likelihood his bail would be refused.
But when he was charged five months later with an additional 37 offences, police only issued the gunman a future court attendance notice.
Vavayis told the inquest that police generally favoured “the least restrictive method” in dealing with defendants, and that as far as the police knew, Monis had never breached previous bail agreements.
“All of that put together goes towards a police position that we [were] not lawfully able to arrest,” she said.
“[Monis] was already on bail, he was complying with that bail, he was in attendance for every court date he was required to be at.
“We would be heavily criticised and potentially deemed as an unlawful arrest if we had arrested him under those circumstance,” she said.
Vavayis’ superior, detective senior constable Eugene Skek, told the inquest that bail reforms in 2013 had tipped the balance in favour of “accused persons in custody”.
He said a DPP solicitor, whose name has been suppressed, told him that regardless of what evidence he led to show Monis was a danger to the community, “the confounding factor was the Bail Act of 2013”.
The new bail regime, now amended, replaced a host of presumptions against bail with a test asking whether a defendant posed an “unacceptable risk” of fleeing the country or tampering with legal proceedings, and whether that risk could be mitigated by bail conditions.
Nonetheless, he conceded that he did not challenge the DPP’s decision in October not to push for Monis’ bail to be revoked.
“Your view was, there is no point in a contest,” counsel assisting the inquest, Jeremy Gormly SC, said.
“Yes,” Stek said.
“And so there wasn’t really any contest between your view and [the DPP solicitors’]?”
A solicitor with the DPP, Larissa Michalko, who dealt with Monis’ May 2014 charges, told the inquest that staff at the state agency often received briefs at short notice and “pretty regularly” lacked the time to fully research the defendants they were opposing.
The inquest heard on Monday the magistrate who granted Monis bail in October 2014 was never told he may have breached an order four years earlier.
Michalko said a national database showing a defendant’s criminal history in Australia’s seven other jurisdictions would be a “godsend”.
Monis was killed in the siege along with two hostages, Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson.
