Don’t forget the heroes of the Lindt cafe siege

WHEN the Tactical Operations Unit police stormed the Lindt cafe, it was with the belief they could be blown up. They were heroes, writes Miranda Devine.

CCTV showing the moment the tactical operations unit storm the Lindt cafe in Martin Place killing Man Haron Monis. (Pic: Supplied)

AS the coroner reports today on the Lindt terrorist attack, let us salute the 14 courageous Tactical Operations Unit police who burst through the doors of the cafe, finally, to end the siege.

The mistakes that were made in those 18 hours were made well above their pay grade, and cascaded down to make a tough job even tougher. Instead of entering at a time of their choosing they were forced to wait until Monis had killed Tori Johnson.

The 14 men had families and partners and children watching television and seeing the danger they were in as they stormed the cafe, not knowing if Man Monis would detonate the bomb he claimed to have in his backpack.

“I hope when the blame game starts, people remember that the men who entered that cafe all thought they would be blown up on that Emergency Action,” says a colleague.

“They were trying to do the best they could within the crappy parameters they were set. It wasn’t ideal and may not have been perfect in some people’s eyes but battle never is clean cut no matter how much the armchair experts may wish it was.”

The 14 men entered that cafe believing that Man Monis had a bomb in his backpack, which could be activated by a “dead man’s switch” once he was killed. Yet there was evidence to suggest the bomb was the fake it was, evidence which no one thought to pass on to allay their fears.

This is one of the questions the family hopes the Coroner will answer.

Why was Monis’ house not searched until 11pm, 13 hours into the siege?

Gabrielle Bashir, counsel for Johnson’s family, made the point during the inquest that the house should have been searched much earlier, because of Monis’ claims he had planted bombs around the city. Those bomb threats turned out to be hoaxes, another fact which could have reassured the TOU officers.

Why were frontline police not told that no bomb residue had been found in Monis’ house or that at least two escaped hostages said Monis was banging his backpack around inside the cafe and so they did not think it contained a bomb.

That bomb was the major reason the police hierarchy gave for not pre-emptively storming the cafe.

Yet the inquest heard that by 9pm a police log noted: “No intelligence to suggest that Monis had skills or access to materials to build an IED.”

Then there was the mystery of two technical intelligence reports from the AFP which only emerged after the inquest had finished hearings. Their contents have not been revealed but if they included an assessment of the backpack bombs, they were never shared with NSW police.

Either way, when the TOU police stormed the cafe, they did so with the expectation that they could be blown up. They were heroes.