A public prosecutor has been accused of not preparing sufficiently to oppose Man Haron Monis’s bail application a year before the Sydney siege.
The solicitor, whose identity has been suppressed, claimed – “to the best of my recollection” – that the New South Wales Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) was not given crucial police evidence that could have had the gunman jailed.
The NSW coroners court is holding an inquest into the siege, which claimed the lives of hostages Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson, as well as Monis.
Proceedings on Friday focused on a submission produced by detective senior constable Melanie Staples, outlining why police believed Monis was too dangerous to release on bail.
It included evidence that Monis was a risk of fleeing the country and of intimidating witnesses, and that he had already breached an earlier bail agreement.
Staples has claimed she handed the submission to the ODPP solicitor but in the witness box on Friday the solicitor denied any memory of the document.
“My best recollection is that I have not seen that document before,” the solicitor said.
The inquest heard the solicitor had received an email one month before the bail hearing providing evidence that Monis was a flight risk.
But transcripts from the December 2013 hearing show that, when asked by the magistrate whether there was any such evidence, the solicitor responded: “I have to take some further instructions on that.”
Counsel assisting, Jeremy Gormly SC, said the solicitor did not cite the email “because you had not prepared sufficiently to enable that information to be available to be provided by the court” – a suggestion the solicitor denied.
A lawyer for Monis, Manny Conditsis, prepared a detailed 30-page brief for the magistrate outlining why the self-styled religious cleric should be granted bail.
In response to this “threatening application”, Gormly suggested the ODPP solicitor should have “do[ne] whatever it is that is necessary to put some written submissions together”. Instead the solicitor relied on oral submissions.
The ODPP solicitor told the inquest of disappointment at the outcome of the bail hearing. “I felt under siege and I felt that I was doing the best I could,” the solicitor said.
The solicitor also admitted to having thrown out notes relating to the case, but denied the police submission could have been among them.
The inquest continues.
