Lindt siege inquest: Police had to assume Monis backpack bomb was real

THE lawyer for Lindt cafe manager Tori Johnson’s family has questioned the decision of police to delay the storming of the cafe.

• SNIPER’S PLEA: LET ME KILL MONIS NOW

THE lawyer for the family of murdered Lindt cafe manager Tori Johnson has questioned the decision of police not to storm the cafe until one of the 18 hostages had been killed or seriously injured.

The inquest into the December 2014 siege has heard the tactical Emergency Action Plan (EAP), decided within 30 minutes of the siege beginning, was not to be triggered even by gunman Man Monis firing his sawn-off shotgun.

Heavily-armed Tactical Operations Unit officers did not attack the cafe to free the remaining hostages until Mr Johnson was shot dead by Monis at 2.13am on December 16, 17 hours into the siege. That was 10 minutes after Monis fired his shotgun at escaping hostages.

Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson were killed during the siege at the Lindt cafe.

Superintendent Allan Sicard leaves court yesterday / Picture: John Grainger

Gabrielle Bashir SC, counsel for Mr Johnson’s family, asked Superintendent Allan Sicard, the first head of the forward command post, what he understood the trigger for the EAP meant.

“You accept don’t you that a trigger that activates in the event of actual shooting or ­serious injury of a hostage is a trigger which fails to protect that innocent person who has been shot or seriously ­injured?” Ms Bashir asked.

Supt Sicard said: “If that is the only trigger, yes.”

Ms Bashir: “It may even fail to protect that person from death?”

Supt Sicard: “If you make it that clinical, potentially.”

He said police always assumed a bomb threat was real until they could be sure otherwise. Officers believed Monis had a bomb in his backpack but it was an old sound speaker.

“For us to charge in the first two hours (of the Lindt siege) could have caused the explosive device to go off, it might have caused the unnecessary death of hostages,” he said.

Barrister Katrina Dawson died after being hit with the fragment of a bullet when police stormed the cafe.

The inquest has been ­adjourned until next Tuesday.

The sawn-off shotgun used by Man Monis during the siege.

Police stormed the Lindt Cafe after a 17 hour stand-off.