Sydney siege inquest: Shocking reason calls from hostages weren’t answered

THE Sydney siege may have ended very differently if negotiators had access to crucial equipment, an inquest has heard.

Tori Johnson, who was killed in the Sydney siege, pictured at the window of the Lindt Cafe. Picture: Channel Seven

DESPERATE calls from Lindt Cafe siege hostages went unanswered because the state’s only negotiation truck, equipped with everything police negotiators needed to operate, was unavailable, an inquest has heard.

It was also revealed that the truck hasn’t been available since 2011.

Co-ordinator of the negotiation unit and team leader “Reg” — who can’t be identified for legal reasons — told the inquest into the deaths arising from the siege that no access to the truck on the day affected the team’s ability to negotiate with the gunman.

Counsel assisting Jason Downing this morning asked Reg if negotiators had “adequate physical resources that day”.

“It was not adequate but we had to make do with what was available to us,” Reg said. “It would have been better if we had our negotiation truck.”

Reg said the team used to have a negotiation truck “that was provided federally to each state (but) our truck wasn’t available” because of storm damage in 2011.

The team was forced to operate out of the gaming manager’s office at the NSW Leagues Club during the siege.

Reg said negotiators missed calls from hostages inside the cafe because the fixed phones inside their makeshift office automatically diverted to other areas in the venue if one person was already on a call.

Hostage Selina Win Pe’s calls with demands from the gunman Man Haron Monis went unanswered at 12.30am, 12.32am and 12.37am in the final hours of the deadly siege on December 16, 2014, an inquest into the incidence was told on Thursday.

Selina Win Pe, pictured in a video posted to YouTube, made three phone calls that went unanswered.

“The phone system in the club as we now know wasn’t the best for our needs and services,” Reg said this morning.

“Whilst hostages were trying to ring in to the number provided to them, we were on the phone trying to ring out, that phone call was being diverted to the next available phone.

“There were times there where calls the hostages made to (primary negotiator) “Peter” went to a different area (in the club) and not to ourselves.”

Mr Downing asked: “If someone was on a phone in the negotiators’ cell and someone made an incoming call, that then diverted somewhere outside of the cell?”

“I believe so and that’s what’s happened,” Reg replied.

“I recall reading the dictaphone transcript of the police forward commander where one of his police officers picked up the phone and there was a conversation where it appeared to be one of the hostages and I retrieved that call and said ‘hello, hello’ and there was no answer.

“If someone was using that phone Peter had and a call came in we didn’t have any control of it.

“It started to highlight itself (as a problem on the day).”

Reg said there was only one mobile phone assigned to the negotiation team but that it wasn’t utilised on the day.

“It would have been useful to have more than one,” he said.

Mr Downing, asked whether negotiators could have used the mobile phone available to them to make calls out and free up the landline for calls coming in. “It makes sense, sir,” Reg said.

“Did you tell them ‘from now on, don’t make calls on the PABX, use the mobile’,” Mr Downing asked.

“No, I didn’t, no,” he replied.

Reg also told the inquest that hours of recordings of hostages’ calls to negotiators were missing.

It was revealed earlier in the week at the inquest that Tori Johnson sent a text message to his loved ones at 1.43am, exactly 30 minutes before he was killed.

The message read: “He’s (Monis) increasingly agitated, walks around when he hears a noise outside with a hostage in front of him. Wants to release one person in good faith, tell police.”

But Assistant Commissioner Mark Jenkins, who was police commander during the final hours of the siege, was unaware of crucial information.

Mr Jenkins said he “wasn’t aware of that text message”.

Hostage Louisa Hope is taken out of the Lindt Cafe by stretcher. Picture: Joosep Martinson/Getty Images

Reg said the negotiators’ truck was once fitted with phones, monitors with live feeds, cells, and various whiteboards to record information including details of the hostages, the gunman and demands.

“Within that truck there’s a cell that is basically separated where you have a team leaders’ area, a solid wall with a perplex window which is sound proof which looks into the negotiators’ cell where your primary, secondary and fourth person is,” he said.

“Within that room are white boards, all those white boards have been sectioned off to different topics; ie hostages, ie demands, ie POI.

“So everything is set up in that truck ready to go.

“As a team they can come in there and write up information as it comes to light. “As it’s no longer valid, it can be erased and updated.”

Reg said there wasn’t even enough room to fit one whiteboard and record the gunman’s demands in the makeshift office.

“There was no physical room where we could put any whiteboards or anything further in that room,” Reg said.

Reg told the inquest the truck was still not available today because it had been “sold off”.

“It was no longer viable. It was damaged in 2011 electrically as well as weather damage. All the insides of it were totally unusable and the truck was sent off to auctions and sold off,” he said.

Bought by the NSW Government almost a decade ago, the police tactical van was idle with a flat tyre in police storage for at least five years after it was damaged in 2011.

Reg said he had been tasked with the job of sourcing a new truck and that plans to have a new one up and running were underway.

“At the moment it’s a project given to myself to look at trying to build ourselves a truck,” he said.

“We have ordered the vehicle chassis it’s being built overseas … we are waiting for it to arrive in the country.”