Siege Negotiator's Training Involved 'Islam 101'

The chief negotiator during the Sydney cafe siege had no experience of dealing with terrorists or a large number of hostages, it has emerged.

The negotiator, who can only be known by the pseudonym of Reg, was giving evidence at an inquest into the December 2014 siege at the Lindt Cafe.

Reg was the leader of a team of four sent to respond to an emergency call after gunman Man Haron Monis entered the cafe and began a 17-hour siege which ended in the death of two of the 18 hostages. Monis was also killed.

The negotiator told the inquest he had previously dealt with hostage situations of three or less in mostly domestic situations and he had been involved with kidnapping and suicide incidents.

He explained that his initial training as a negotiator began in 1998 and involved about four weeks of work spread over three years at a police academy.

He said he had done a very short course on understanding Islam which he referred to as an "Islam 101".

He said the process of responding to a hostage crisis was the same, regardless of whether it was a terrorist situation or not.

But he said the negotiators had suffered a setback because Monis had refused to take their phone calls, meaning it was hard for negotiators to influence his behaviour.

Reg also told the inquest it would have been better to have had more resources to deal with the social media messages the hostages were using to communicate with the outside world.

Coroner Michael Barnes is presiding over the inquest into the siege which ended just after 2am on 16 December 2014 when Monis shot dead cafe manager Tori Johnson at point-blank range in the back of the head.

The shooting led to police storming the cafe and the gunman was killed less than a minute later.

A second hostage, Katrina Dawson, died after being hit by police shrapnel.

Although Monis claimed his attack was in affiliation with Islamic State, it has emerged that he had no contact with the terror organisation before the siege.