2014 Sydney hostage crisis
The 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, also known as the Sydney siege and Lindt Cafe siege, occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt chocolate café located at Martin Place in Sydney, Australia. Police treated the event as a terrorist attack at the time, but Monis' motives were subsequently debated. However, the findings of the Coroner in 2017 deemed the event to be a terrorist attack.
Terrorism in Australia
The designation of the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, also known as the Sydney Martin Place siege, has been subject to debate among terrorism experts and news commentators. Initially, during the early stages of the incident, the Australian government and NSW authorities did not label the event as a terrorist attack; however, as the siege continued, NSW police authorised the engagement of the state's counterterrorism task force, treating the incident as an act of terrorism. Commentators have debated whether the perpetrator of the attack, Man Haron Monis, was in fact a terrorist and whether his actions can be classified as an act of terrorism. One terrorism expert described Monis's actions as those of a "lone-wolf terrorist … driven by a desire for attention and to be in the spotlight." Another wrote in an opinion column that the attack "was very different from first-generation or second-generation terrorist attacksbut it was terrorism, and terrorism of a brutal and more unpredictable sort." Scott Stewart supervisor of the analysis of terrorism and security issues for Statfor said that this hostage-incident exhibits many of the elements associated with grassroots terrorism. By contrast, criminologist Mark Lauchs stated that the event "was not about religion and neither was it a terrorist attack." Media outlets have also provided conflicting designations for Monis; John Lehmann, editor of "The Daily Telegraph", wrote how Monis filled the criteria of an Islamic State terrorist, while a columnist for "The Guardian" wrote how the designation of a terrorist is misplaced and would only serve the interests of ISIL. On 15 January 2015, Australia's Treasurer Joe Hockey declared the siege in Sydney's Martin Place as a terrorist incident for insurance purposes.