The siege is over. Sixteen hours after a gunman invaded a chocolate shop in the Sydney’s financial district, commandos stormed in to free the dozens of hostages held there. According to police, two died in the incident, along with the gunman who has been identified as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian refugee with a criminal record. Four were injured in the ordeal, including a police officer.
“This was an isolated incident,” the state police commissioner for New South Wales Andrew Scipione said after the siege ended. “This should never destroy or change the way of our life.”
Australia has been on guard in the face of unspecified threats for months, and has rolled out anti-terrorism legislation, which critics feared would be too severe — and may even make it more likely for terrorists plot attacks on Australia instead of heading off to join terrorist groups operating in other countries. The country has enacted more than 60 counterterrorism laws since 2001.
In September, 800 police officers raided homes in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, arresting 15 people. This extensive counterterrorism operation was ordered in response to a call by ISIS to carry out public beheadings in Australia. A move that members of the Australian Syrian Association called “an exaggeration” of the threat.
Days later, Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised the terrorist alert level for the first time since 2002. Although he indicated that the government had “no specific intelligence” of a plot, he said, “What we do have is intelligence that there are people with the intent and the capability to mount attacks.”
By the end of October, Australian legislatures had passed two measures to enhance the country’s ability to thwart such attacks. The first gave broad access to computer networks within the country to Australia’s domestic spy agency, and imposed an up to 10 year sentence for journalists and whistleblowers who reveal “special” security matters.
The second law carries criminal charges up to life in prison for those who seek to “subvert society” — a phrasing which the country’s former national security legislation monitor Bret Walker said is all-too reminiscent of “the propaganda cadre from the old Soviet union or Maoist China.”
Referred to as the “foreign fighters” law, the measure makes it illegal for Australians to travel to declared “no-go sites” without a valid reason, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It also provides for the passports of suspected Islamist militants to be seized, and for preventative detention.
While many countries including the U.S. have buttressed counter-terrorism laws in light of the “foreign fighters” phenomenon, critics say that Australia’s efforts are overly vague and harsh.
“It is quite extraordinary that you can be put in prison for 10 years just for being in a place,” Nathan Kennedy of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights said. “There should be a need to prove intent.”
It does not appear that the law which makes it harder for him to ISIS-controlled territory would have had an impact on Monis. The 50-year-old “self-styled cleric” out on bail after being charged as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife, and would likely have had his passport revoked as a consequence. Although he forced hostages to hold up the black-and-white flag used by ISIS to show passersby, he has not yet been directly connected to the terrorist group.
To Justin Hastings, a professor of international relations and comparative politics at the University of Sydney, that’s not the most pressing issue.
“Whether or not there was any connection between ISIS and what he did, in some ways, is not relevant,” he said in a phone interview. “ISIS strategy has always been, we can’t reach out and attack Australia or the U.S., but we can encourage people already in those countries to do it for us, even though we have no kinetic control structure. So that is part of ISIS strategy even though he has no connection to ISIS.”
And even despite a strengthening of counter-terrorism laws in Australia, it’s a challenge for law enforcement to track someone like Monis, who appears to have carried out this attack on his own.
Even though the new laws allow for terrorism suspects to be detained without charge for a longer term, that’s only effective if evidence can be collected to support a case, and, according to Hastings, that isn’t often available for so-called “long wolf” terrorists.
“The idea was basically that if we keep them detained or longer, we can gather evidence on them, we can maybe sweat them for their associates, but if you’re holding someone who has no associates, no intercept sort of data, if you haven’t been able to collect any information through wiretaps, it’s really problematic,” He explained. “In that sense, I think the laws are more oriented towards group plots where they have to communicate, and they have to get together and plan things. From the perspective of individuals who don’t even have a good plan, they may not be as effective.”
To some, the issue is not just that the laws might not be effective at preventing terrorist attacks in every instance, but that they might actually backfire.
In an email to ThinkProgress, George Williams, a law professor at the University of New South Wales wrote that “enacting such laws comes with significant costs.”
“In particular, some measures can give rise to a sense of grievance in sections of the community if people believe they have been unfairly ostracized or singled out,” he said. “Such concerns are widespread, and can also reflect the fact that some of Australia’s anti-terrorism laws have been almost exclusively applied to members of the Muslim community. For example, despite terrorism being a phenomenon that applies across a range of political ideologies and religions, all but one of the 20 organisations listed by the Australian government are in some way associated with Islamic ideology.”
Although Monis was convicted of sending hateful letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, he was not on the country’s terror list. To this point, Prime Minister Abbott asked at a press conference, “How can someone who has had such a long and chequered history not be on the appropriate watch lists and how can someone like that be entirely at large?”
In seeking to prevent a future lapse, his government may move to crack down further on those suspected of having extremist ideologies.
For Hastings, sending offense letters to the families of slain soldiers isn’t necessary a marker of future terrorist attacks.
“It gave us a window into his ideology,” he said, “But a lot of people have that ideology and not all of them end up taking hostages in a café in Sydney. So you would need more than that to begin thinking about potential risk patterns.”
Still, he said that he wouldn’t be surprised if the government responds to Monis’ violent attack by passing more laws. Though, he added, “Once you get down to stopping individuals, specific laws are too broad. In some ways you’re focusing on the wrong thing. [The government] is not focusing on how to respond to discourage other terrorists or to prevent them from even thinking about carrying out a terrorist attack.”