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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Two Killed, Three Injured in Sydney Standoff; Hostage Taker Identified as Man Haron Monis; Criminal Past of Hostage Taker

Aired December 15, 2014 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. It is 4:00 in the morning Tuesday in Sydney, Australia, where a 16-hour hostage standoff at a downtown cafe is now over, but some very important details are still very much unknown. Australian media say two people were killed, three others seriously hurt when police stormed the cafe a little less than two hours ago. That was just moments after five or more hostages were either allowed to go free or escaped on their own. Five others ran free hours earlier than that.

And we know the man who was holding them is or was Man Haron Monis, a 50-year-old self-styled Muslim cleric with an eye-popping criminal record. We do not know whether Monis is among those who were killed in this raid. Before I get you to our many live reporters who have seen this from the very beginning, I want to show you how this slow-motion nightmare came to a sudden and violent end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like four or five hostages have managed to either escape or be removed from the Lindt cafe where they were being held hostages.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More pictures now coming through. It looks like there's more activity going on. Sure, (INAUDIBLE) find out what's happening now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look, you can probably hear the loud explosions behind me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know if it's gunfire. I don't know if it's some sort of small explosive device from - now that is certainly gunfire.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're throwing something, Shawn (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is happening just in Martin Place. The police are throwing something?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are. They're throwing something into the doorway.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In a situation -

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we've just seen another hostage brought out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, that may be a stun grenade.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A woman has been brought out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that may well - yes, that may well be a stun grenade in this situation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can see a woman there from these live pictures from Martin Place being carried out by officers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can just see now - I don't know whether you can see on this live shot, a whole bunch of paramedics running up Martin Place. So they're entering from Elizabeth (ph) Street and they're running up Martin Place towards the Lindt cafe. I've counted at least four stretchers going that way so far.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we can see that on the live shot there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ambulances racing through, past us now, bringing patients out. We had an ambulance driver just ask some camera people to move out of the way because they had a patient that they needed to bring out. They then turned around and sped out.

I saw multiple ambulances coming out, racing out of the scene just a moment ago. And shortly after, about three police cars raced in towards the city, towards the center of the scene.

I can smell the gunfire in the air. It's really quite an incredible scene. The city is still deafly silent apart from the sirens and the occasion from where I am -- and the occasional volley of munitions, of gunfire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: We're now just getting confirmation that the gunman, the hostage taker, was shot and killed in this instance. And we're also getting a lot more information right now about the logistics of how this raid actually went down. I want to take you live instantly to CNN's Anna Coren, who's standing by.

Anna, you have had a very long day, long night. You watched this from the beginning and now this very explosive end. What are we finding out about what the police did to bring this to an end?

ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh, after a 16-hour siege, police finally stormed the Lindt cafe just after 2:00 a.m. We understand they used live gunfire, as well as stun grenades. Obviously, the gunman - the armed gunman was killed. Man Horan Monis, the self-proclaimed Sheikh Horan, as well as one of the hostages inside. There were at least seven other people who were brought out on stretchers and are now being treated. Many of them taken off to hospital. Still trying to get specific numbers on how many managed to survive this siege.

But certainly, you know, dramatic pictures just after 2:00 a.m. when finally the commandos stormed this building. You know, we were wondering whether it would take place. We were led to sort of believe that they were willing to wait this out, to ensure that this would end - end peacefully. But, obviously, they got to the end of their tether, that they figured that they had reached a point in the negotiations where it wasn't going to go any further. Perhaps the gunman was getting tired, sleepy, so they decided to pounce.

But certainly the siege now over and we're learning much more details about this gunman who has a very checkered and dodgy past. I just want to read some of it to you. He pled guilty last year to writing offensive letters to the bereaved family of veterans who had passed away. He served time, community service for that.

BANFIELD: In fact, you know what, Anna, we're just getting - I only want to break in for a moment, Anna, and I know we're on delay and I apologize for interrupting you.

COREN: Yes.

BANFIELD: But we're getting some breaking information on the logistics of that raid and the number of people there. The police are saying there may have actually, Anna, been about nine people inside, including the hostage taker. That (INAUDIBLE) perhaps seven additional hostages who were in there. They apparently stormed from two different directions. That would be what you were just referring to with the stun grenades going off. They entered from two. Whether they stun grenade from both as well, it remains to be seen.

But they did discover him wearing a thick, black vest. They were worried that he'd been carrying explosives for perhaps - perhaps that was an explosives vest. You can see the picture that we got early on in this siege when you began your coverage, Anna. And it's hard to tell what that vest was, but they confirmed when they were inside that he had that thick, black vest on. They did get an ordinance team in there and did a clearance of the building. Whether they found ordinance or explosives on him, they have not reported that yet.

But the unbelievable story that's coming from the faces of those who fled is just remarkable. But, again, they did check the gunman and the area. They cleared the building, they checked him for devices. They are not reporting yet from the authorities whether the body had devices on it. But again, confirmation that hostage taker is dead.

I want to thank Anna Coren for her live reporting, her long night of live reporting on the scene.

I also want to talk a little bit more about what Anna was just alluding to, and that was the rap sheet, the man who perpetrated this horror. His bad behavior begins with hate mail and it progresses all the way to sex crimes, accessory to murder. These allegations he was still facing at this time. CNN's Atika Shubert is live in London.

And you've been chasing down this rap sheet. Can you pick up where Anna left off?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, as Anna mentioned, he'd already pled guilty to sending a string of harassing letters to the families of Australian soldier who died in Afghanistan. And he was sentenced to 300 hours of community service for that. But in addition to that, he was also charged as an accessory to the murder of his former wife and, much more recently, also faced sexual assault charges dating back from 2002. So this is somebody who was well known to police.

Also, he was very prominent in the kinds of political protests he was making. You can see on that video there, he was seen on the streets of Sydney chaining himself to court, to parliament in some cases. So this is somebody who was very well known, very visible. But he's also somebody who was a self-declared Muslim cleric and he described himself as a man of peace. So it's not really clear what, at this point, led him to take such violent action.

We do have some clues off of his social media and other web pages in which he posted letters denying the charges that he was facing. He also claimed that he was being denied access to his children. And interestingly, he also claimed -- pledged allegiance to ISIS. Now, as interesting as that might be, we have to point out, there is no -- no indication that he had any direct conversation or any sort of transaction with ISIS at all at this point. So far, everything seems to indicate that he acted on his own initiative.

BANFIELD: Did he -- do we know if the Australian authorities, as they were watching him, were they sharing this information with the Americans or anyone else around the world?

SHUBERT: Well, what we do is that they have a very close relationship with authorities here in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada all have that specialized agreement for intelligence sharing. The question is whether or not he really came up very high in terms of their priority. I mean consider that this is a man who was mostly out there in front of the streets making protests. There wasn't really anything violent in his behavior. He did send those harassing letters, but he often said in interviews to the press that his weapons were pen and paper. So there was nothing so far it seems to indicate any call to violent action. But we don't know what may have triggered this, if there was some sort of recent development that actually compelled him to go out and do this kind of a violent act.

BANFIELD: Atika Shubert live for us in London, thank you for that.

And, you know, almost from the beginning, the outside world had a window into this ordeal, not just from the actual windows of the Lindt chocolate cafe, where you witnessed these pictures which were harrowing in themselves, but there was also that window into the cell phone calls, the social media posts from the people who were held up inside. My CNN colleague, Tom Foreman, was tracking those from Washington.

This was one of those extremely unusual circumstances where we could follow things, but only to a point. TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, only to a point. But one of the most critical elements here were the videos posted by the hostages at the behest at this hostage taker. They were posted, among other areas, on Live Link (ph), which is a service out of the U.K., Live Leak (ph), which post videos, sort of like YouTube does. And in these videos, these people stated the demands of the hostage taker and they grew ever more urgent in tone. Four of them in all. Listen to a clip from the fourth one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please help us. It's simple. He wants an ISIS flag. And want to Tony Abbot to ring him and speak to him on live media. Pretty straightforward. What else can we do? We are begging.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: The demands were pretty much the same in all four of them, Ashleigh. Pretty straightforward. You can hear the pressure on these hostages as they repeated these demands. But every one of them also gave some clues to authorities, Ashleigh, about the situation inside that very tense room.

BANFIELD: And then the answer to this might be actually quite simple, but sometimes it's illusive, and that is that the media was asked not to air those during this incident.

FOREMAN: Yes, of course. Authorities want to have some control over how much this person can speak to the world and get their message out because that's a negotiating tool. And I will point out something interesting. These videos also reasserted in a very public way that this guy only had a few demands. And in terms of negotiating in a hostage situation, that's problematic. If somebody has a list of 12 or 15 demands, it's easier to work with that as a negotiator and try to get a sense of progress and keep things moving forward. If someone only has three demands and they're very clear and by that last statement he's down to two demands, it makes it very hard to say, how do we move forward? How do we make any kind of concession to keep this peaceful when this it person keeps saying, I just want these things. So that information is important and police would like to keep that under some control simply because they don't want this person to have a bigger sense of who they are and how important they are.

BANFIELD: Sure. Yes, demanding to be live on the air with Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister.

FOREMAN: Yes, and that's not going to happen. That's (INAUDIBLE).

BANFIELD: It may be a single demand. It's a big, big demand.

FOREMAN: Yes, exactly.

BANFIELD: Tom Foreman, great reporting, thank you for that. You know, when you're dealing with someone, as Tom was just talking

about, somebody with this kind of problem, it's like you're dancing on the razor's edge. So, how did the police decide when to go in, when not to, when to end a hostage situation? We're going to talk with a former hostage negotiator, an international one, who's got some really strong experience in this area. He's a former FBI agent as well. What goes into making that call? Who makes it and how fast do they do it?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Hostage standoffs put law enforcement in an extremely difficult position when negotiations break down. If they don't act, hostages could be killed. And if they do, if they storm in like the Sydney Police did this morning, there's a chance innocent people can be caught in the crossfire. There's also a chance they can be executed by the hostage taker.

Joining me to talk about the tactics and the razor thin decisions that are made of hostage standoffs is Chris Voss, the FBI's former lead international kidnapping negotiator and the current managing director of Insight Security, and Tom Fuentes, a former FBI assistant director and CNN law enforcement analyst in Washington, D.C.

Chris, if I can start with you. You watched what just happened. We're still sort of just trying to digest a lot of it in the wake of a lot of these really dramatic pictures. It's hard to tell from the camera's viewpoint, but some of the details that are coming in now, do you think that what they did was exactly what they needed to do at the right time?

CHRIS VOSS, FORMER FBI HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR : Yes. Well, thanks for having me on. Yes. And they probably saw this coming and it was quite a bit of timing that would be available to them from the very beginning the communications started on this. To take you inside of one of these from the hostage negotiator's point of view, they have to begin assess initially how much they think the threat level is based on a subject's communications, and they also have to know a number of things to watch out for in the event that they have to see a rapid escalation in threat level. So they'll get a pretty good feel of how it's evolving. It's a little bit of a roller coaster ride all along, but it generally has an overall direction trending in one way or the other. So they'll have a pretty good idea when the threat level is very eminent.

BANFIELD: So, Tom, I want you to jump in on this conversation and, at the same time, I'm just going to give you a little bit of breaking news that's coming our way. The Australian special forces, known as the SAS, apparently their elite operations team was involved in this takedown. They were coordinating with a rapid action deployment force with the police. And they entered from two different sides of the building.

We saw these amazing pictures as they happened. We saw the flash grenades going off. I've been near a flash grenade. I haven't been inside a building with a flash grenade. But how do you coordinate when there's so many unknowns, the number of people was unknown, exactly where the hostage taker might have been at that moment is unknown, and you've got two forces coming in from two different locations. How do you coordinate to get the guy you need to get and no one else, including yourselves?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, actually, it's very difficult. I've been an on-scene commander in these hostage situations and you don't have perfect information. You're trying to analyze what you do have that's coming in from a variety of sources. And like Chris mentioned, a key source of your information to make that decision is your negotiators. They're well trained, well experienced in dealing with the psychology of someone that is taking hostages, like in this situation. And when they tell you this is going downhill, it's deteriorating. We're liable to have violence against these hostages. We better try to rescue them and you make that decision.

Now, otherwise, if something happens that you didn't plan on, there's shots fired inside or you have indications through the observers that a hostage is being harmed, then you may have to make the decision to affect the dyamic (ph) assault on that premise in a split second.

BANFIELD: So - so, Chris, if -

FUENTES: They would have been - they would have been planning for this all day. They had 16 hours to figure out the tactics.

BANFIELD: For - yes, 16 hours.

FUENTES: Yes.

BANFIELD: Chris, and from when I'm hearing, it's sort of a two-pronged job that you're trying to do. Number one, you're trying to talk this person down, get those people out, but at the same time glean as much tactical information as you can for team number two.

VOSS: That's exactly right. And it is a two-part process in gathering the information and providing the ongoing assessment, to someone such as Tom, who may be in command of the overall situation, is extremely important. That assessment of what's happening also goes to the tactical teams and the negotiators and the tactical teams work effectively hand in glove to support the decision making by the on scene commander, who will decide whether or not we're going to be able to talk them out, or whether or not some sort of dynamic assault is going to have to be effected.

BANFIELD: Tom, one last question about equipment. And I know that a lot of this is kept from us for good reason. But as, you know, we become more sophisticated with drone capabilities, and some of these drones are as small as flies. Are these employed often and are they successful? Are they sort of what have given us a greater edge in determining logistics and tactical advantage in trying to do these takedowns? Getting a small camera inside the actual location?

FUENTES: Well, getting a camera inside the location is different than having a drone. Aerial reconnaissance support happens at the FBI. We use aircraft, we use drones, to get a picture from the air, of the exits of the building, the layout, the block, how to position your perimeter and where to put your command post, things like that. To try to get cameras into the premise, there are ways that that's done over the course of the crisis. I don't want to go into exactly how that's done, but it is attempted to get cameras and microphones in to find out what's going on but just don't - I don't want to tell how that's done.

BANFIELD: It's all understandable and it is fascinating and to - it's a pun, but to be a fly on the wall, really remarkable equipment that's being employed these days.

Tom Fuentes, Chris Voss, thank you both. Appreciate your insights.

FUENTES: Thank you, Ashleigh.

VOSS: My pleasure.

BANFIELD: From what we know, this hostage taker acted alone. And there have been concerns from terror analysts about lone wolf attacks. You've heard about them. How big a difference is there between the lone wolf and the stray dog? And, by the way, does that make a difference anyway when lives are lost?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: We're learning details about Sydney hostage taker Man Horan Monis that may shed some light on his motives. He was a self- proclaimed Muslim cleric who calls himself - or did call himself Sheikh Horan. Last year he pleaded guilty to writing letters to Australian service members saying that they were, quote, Hitler's soldiers. He was also facing charges for more violent crimes, including accessory to the murder of his ex-wife. And on top of that, he was facing sexual assault charges stemming from his work as a so- called sexual spiritual leader and healer.

It is unclear if Monis acted alone in taking these hostages, but it does appear that way. A U.S. law enforcement source tells CNN that right now all indications point to Monis likely being a lone wolf.

Joining me to talk about whether Monis was such a thing, a lone wolf, or part of a broader plot is former Jihadist Mubin Shaikh and - he's in Toronto with us live, and also Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," live here with me in the studio.

First and foremost, as we see yet another terror incident being carried out by what looks like a single handed lone wolf, does this tell us anything more than we learned in Toronto, than we learned from a beheading in the southern United States, from any of the other incidents that were starting to see being called terror around the world?

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, CNN'S "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": I think what we're seeing, Ashleigh, is the pattern, which is, this is the face of terror today. After 9/11, a lot of people thought that we're going to see a more, big spectacular attacks on either government buildings or kind of symbolic targets, which turned out, once the governments of the world tracked these people, tracked the money, denied them the ability to transfer funds, have no-fly lists, it's very tough to do that kind of, you know, multi-stage operation.

What you have now, this is the face of terror. It's lone wolf operations. These people are often inspired, self-inspired, either on the Internet or often these guys are psychopaths and, frankly, you know, that seems to be close to the case in this one. So what we haven't done is really reoriented our basic anti-terror strategy to say to ourselves, this is the real threat, which means you need a lot of good local intelligence, which means you need to get into the communities and not alienate them. Secondly, you need to have very good special ops. And the Australians clearly did that very, very well. And thirdly, you've got to ask yourself, how do you - how do you defang these people? And Tony Abbott, the prime minister of Australia, put it very well, what he talked about was essentially resilience. He didn't - he didn't use that word, but he said, we're, you know, a country that doesn't get phased by these things. It's going to be business as usual. I appeal to all of you. Get back to work. In other words, don't let this terrorize you. And if you do that, intelligence, special ops and resilience, you're going to have a pretty powerful strategy, but you're never going to be able to detect every lone wolf.

BANFIELD: So then, Mubin Shaikh, bouncing off what Fareed just said, if local intelligence is now the new front in this kind of a war, as opposed to torture for information in a cell in some black site, where are the weaknesses? Where are the soft spots? How do certain forces get in to the enemy's forces in these local communities?

MUBIN SHAIKH, FORMER JIHADIST: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. And your comments are - both of your comments are spot on. When it comes to lone actors, and there are a number of terms that are being used for them, lone wolves, lune (ph) wolves or known (ph) wolves. And the problem is, when they're unknown or proper lone wolves, like they don't have a digital footprint, this individual was very active in politically motivated demonstrations with local grievances. He was known to police, but, I mean, what does that mean? An individual who's, you know, just sounding off, that's not - that's not criminal activity so you really can't do anything about it. The gaps lie in with those individuals when are not - who are not online and who are not making a statement whereby they can be tracked.

BANFIELD: And when they can be and when they have these profiles, as this particular man clearly did, a man who was very troubled and showed signs when he was writing those political letters to the Australian forces and being prosecuted for it, what then? I mean you can't go outside the law, but is there something else within the community that can be done?

SHAIKH: Well, it's difficult because in cases where, you know, I know this as being an undercover is that when a lot of these guys go to mosques, they don't advertise who they are. They don't wear a sign saying, you know, I'm a terrorist, I'm going to go and kill people. You know, Muslim communities themselves can't, you know, identify them directly. Our own national security agencies can't do it, you know, perfectly. But vigilance in the community. I mean, you know, there's a unanimous agreement in a Muslim community that, look, when you find these people, you need to report them to police. And police will do what they can, whether it's sending in a source, whether it's eavesdropping or electronic intercepts or physical surveillance, they do what, you know, what they have in their tool box.

BANFIELD: So, Fareed, the (INAUDIBLE) Australia spoke out very quickly about this. Perhaps too late for this instance for him to - for the perpetrator to be affected by it at all. But when Mubin says what he does, and when we know there may be these weaknesses, where there may be areas where interception can happen even with these lone wolves or the stray dogs who are just sniffing about the edges of danger, is there something that the leadership in the Muslim community can do better?