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.
2014 Sydney hostage crisis
After the siege, the revelation that the new Bail Act had allowed Monis to be granted bail sparked calls to further tighten the law; however a review had already been conducted in the wake of earlier controversial bail releases, with the new law set "to take effect next year" (that is, on 28 January 2015). Former director of public prosecutions in New South Wales, Nicholas Cowdery, said he was not sure that the amended law would have changed anything in Monis' case, part of the argument being that "magistrates and judges cannot be expected to gaze into a crystal ball when granting bail". Homicide detectives sent a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) urging them to challenge the bail decision for Monis, but a commissioned officer did not pass it on to the DPP. Michael Esposito, writing for the Law Society of South Australia, noted that the shocking nature of the Sydney siege had the power to prompt reviews of bail laws across Australia.