Leading Australian Muslim leaders said on Monday that Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis was unknown in the Muslim community and an “amateur” in his understanding of Islam.
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The inquiry also heard Monis left his home country Iran amid accusations of embezzlement when he had worked as a pseudo-travel agent for Iranians looking to migrate overseas.
“Whether Mr Monis was a terrorist or not, he made use of terrorist threats, garb and language”, she said.
He showed the inquest a photograph of the sawn-off shotgun, used by Monis, alongside an identical, but unmodified, version and called attention to the butt of the sawn-off weapon, which had been carefully sawn around the buttplate’s rear screw.
Vavayis told the inquest that police generally favoured “the least restrictive method” in dealing with defendants, and that as far as the police knew, Monis had never breached previous bail agreements.
“Mr Monis had already been on bail, he was complying with those conditions, he hadn’t not attended court before”, Ms Vavayis said.
On December 15, 2014, Man Haron Monis took 18 people hostage inside the Lindt Cafe.
“It’s hard not to note the consequences resulting from the lack of flow of information across jurisdictional boundaries”.
“Your view was, there is no point in a contest”, counsel assisting the inquest, Jeremy Gormly South Carolina, said.
“Whatever the outcome of that (bail conditions) review, it is important to acknowledge that it is being given with the benefit of hindsight”, he said.
State Coroner Michael Barnes said it was unfair to blame prosecutors for Monis being granted bail.
But he said it was a cornerstone of the developed world’s justice systems and to do away with it would be inconceivable.
Detective Senior Constable Denise Vavayis led the investigation into the sexual assaults and told the inquest that under the legislation, police would have been acting unlawfully if they arrested Monis on the fresh charges.
Forensics experts including bomb technicians, blood spatter and DNA analysts and ballistics experts have spent more than 1000 hours doing their own reviews.
Next week the inquest will deal with how he came to be on bail despite murder and sexual assault charges, how he obtained the shotgun he used to kill the manager in the cafe where he staged a 16-hour siege and whether offenses can be defined as terrorism.
The inquest heard that the evening before the hearing, the prosecutor had told Monis’ defence that police had “no issue” with bail being continued.
Another hostage, Katrina Dawson, 38, also died during the siege.
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The inquest previously heard Monis had been granted bail three times in the 12 months before the siege: in December 2013, after being charged for being an accessory to murder; in May 2014, in relation to the three counts of sexual assault; and in October, on the new sexual assault charges.
