The gunman behind the deadly siege of a cafe in Sydney this week was not on a security watch list, and Australia’s Prime Minister wants to know why.
Tony Abbott told AM, a radio program of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that the system fell short.
“There’s no doubt about that, and this is why we’ve got to constantly learn the lessons of everything that happens. We’ve got to be constantly asking ourselves: Is this the best we can do?
“And frankly, we’ve got to always be better at this because if we aren’t good at this, our people suffer. And the tragedy of this atrocity is that two delightful Australians, two very decent people, are dead. Others are injured. Others are traumatized because of a madman who was roaming our streets,” the Prime Minister said Wednesday.
Authorities have identified the gunman as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born refugee who was granted political asylum in Australia.
He seized control of the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in the heart of Sydney’s central business district and held it for some 16 hours.
The siege ended when police stormed the cafe early Tuesday. The gunman was killed, but so were two hostages — Katrina Dawson, a 38-year-old barrister and mother of three, and Tori Johnson, the manager of the cafe.
Monis was on bail for violence criminal offenses at the time of the attack. He had a long history of mental illness and violence, the Prime Minister said.
“This was the act of someone who was way beyond any mainstream, any mainstream, and has been rightly, absolutely repudiated by all the communities of Australia,” Abbott told the AM program. “We want to know why he wasn’t being monitored, given his history of violence, his history of mental instability, and his history of infatuation with extremism.”
As authorities work to find the answer to that, and other unanswered questions, a makeshift memorial has sprung up in Sydney as people come to pay tribute to the victims. Thousands of people have left flowers, cards and signed condolence books.
“We’re a country that is not innocent of these issues,” Kim Beazley, Australian ambassador to the United States, told CNN’s “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” on Wednesday.
“We are well-prepared in many ways, but we weren’t well-prepared enough for this particular man, in this particular place, and that will require investigation,” he said.