Pilot Prioritises Passengers

Just one day after the tragic plane crash that cost 150 people their lives, a Germanwings pilot took the time to put his passengers at ease. One passenger describes this moment;

“Yesterday morning at 8:40 a.m., I got onto a Germanwings flight from Hamburg to Cologne with mixed feelings. But then the captain not only welcomed each passenger separately, he also made a short speech before take off. Not from the cockpit — he was standing in the cabin. He spoke about how the accident touched him and the whole crew. About how queasy the crew feels, but that everybody from the crew is voluntarily here. And about his family and that the crew have a family and that he is going to do everything to be with his family again tonight. It was completely silent. And then everybody applauded. I want to thank this pilot. He understood what everybody was thinking. And that he managed to give, at least me, a good feeling for this flight.”

Killer in the Cockpit

A mass murder investigation is currently underway in France after a co-pilot deliberately crashed a plane into the French Alps killing 149 passengers and crew. 27 year old Andreas Lubitz’s mental health is now being called into question as it becomes more apparent that this is a case of murder suicide.

Simon Wessely, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says that it is unlikely that we will ever know what pushed Lubitz to commit such an act;

‘It’s possible something will emerge, but in most suicides people leave clues or a message. Incredibly extreme events like this are sometimes just inexplicable.’

Media speculation about Lubitz’s mental health has become the focus of the investigation thus far with sick notes being discovered that proved that Lubitz should not have been flying on that fateful day.

However, Marjorie Wallace, CEO of mental health charity SANE, says;

‘There are thousands of people with a diagnosis of depression, including pilots, who work, hold positions of high responsibility and who present no danger whatsoever…We do not know what part depression played in this tragedy but it is a condition that should never be trivialised.’

According to Dr Paul Keedwell, consultant psychiatrist and mood disorder specialist, states that the rate of previously diagnosed depression in murder-suicide cases ranges from 40%-60% depending on context.

It has emerged that Lubitz may have planned this attack for quite some time. His previous partner told a German newspaper how Lubitz told her last year;

‘One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.’

Friends and neighbours have described Lubitz as ‘quiet’ but ‘fun’ and who thoroughly enjoyed his job. Certainly, an unlikely character to cause such a tragedy. German media said that aviation authority documents suggested however that Lubitz was suffering from depression and required continual assessment.

Dusseldorf University Hospital confirmed Lubitz had attended the hospital in February and March of this year for diagnostic evaluation but have denied that he received any treatment for depression whilst there.

Mr Lubitz’s passion for flying began at the tender age of fourteen when he became a member of the LSC Westerwald glider club in Montabaur. Coincidentally, this explains how he knew the area where the plane went down.

According the club’s chairman, Klaus Radke, Lubitz learned to fly in a ASK-21 two seat glider and then went on to obtain his full licence. He graduated from high school in 2007 and enrolled as a Lufthansa trainee. He had several months break during his training, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, confirmed but the reason for this was not disclosed. The newspaper Bild claims that this interruption was due to severe psychiatric problems and Lubitz was forced to repeat classes several times before completing his training. Following his completion, Bild says that Lubitz suffered a depressive episode and went on to receive treatment for the next year and a half.

Despite doctor recommendations that he should receive ongoing assessments, Lubitz went on to join Lufthansa’s low budget airline Germanwings. He initially started as a flight attendant before becoming a co-pilot. Lufthansa confirmed that Lubitz had flown a total of 630 hours as co-pilot before the fatal crash on Tuesday.

He was cleared in security checks in January and Mr Spohr says that ‘he was 100% fit to fly without any restrictions or conditions.’

Paul Ruecker, a long time member of the LSC Westerwald glider club insisted that Lubitz seemed ‘very happy’ during their last meeting.

‘I’m just speechless. I don’t have any explanation for this. Knowing Andreas, this is just inconceivable for me.’ 

9.45am – the plane reaches cruising altitude of 38,000 ft. the pilot and co-pilot are heard chatting normally. The pilot is heard moving his chair back and leaving the cockpit.

9.47am -  the plane has begun descending with the last radar position at an altitude of 6,175 ft. air traffic control issues a distress phase due to the loss of radio contact and the speed of descent. The plane itself did not issue a distress call. A spokesman from DGAC aviation authority said;

‘At no point during the descent was there any communication from the cockpit to air traffic controllers or any other signal of an emergency.’

9.53am-10am – the pilot is heard returning to the cockpit door but cannot re-enter because it is locked. The co-pilot refuses to open the door and the pilot is then heard trying to smash it down. Passengers are unaware of the imminent crash until minutes before. They are heard screaming as the plane crashes into the side of the mountain. Lubitz was conscious and breathing calmly and normally up until impact. Just before 10am, the plane crashes after travelling from an altitude of 36,000 ft to an altitiude of 5,000 ft over the space of eight minutes. The plane was travelling at 435mph. 

Justice Served

Eddie Ray Routh claimed to be legally insane when he killed Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield in 2013. On Tuesday this week, a jury found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison. Mr Routh, shot Mr Kyle and Mr Littlefield in the back, a total of 13 times, at a gun range. Mr Routh's mother had asked Mr Kyle personally to befriend her son, in an attempt to help him after he returned from Iraq. After his service in the Marines, Mr Routh received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis. His relatives also testified that Mr Routh had suicidal and paranoid feelings in the months before the fatal shooting.

Mr Routh used two of Mr Kyle's handguns to shoot Mr Kyle and Mr Littlefield. The police played several videotaped and recorded interviews with Mr Routh for the jurors. Mr Routh gave bizarre explanations for shooting Mr Kyle and Mr Littlefield. He spoke of fearing for his life and was under the impression that they were going to kill him at the range. He said that Mr. Littlefield was not shooting at the range and that “that’s what got me riled up.” He said he was offended that Mr. Kyle had not shaken his hand when they met, was bothered by the smell of cologne in Mr. Kyle’s truck, and was annoyed that the two men did not talk to him on the drive to the range.

“It smelled like sweet cologne,” Mr. Routh told a reporter for The New Yorker in 2013, in a phone call from jail that was recorded. “I was smelling love and hate. They were giving me some love and hate.”

Mr. Routh had made bizarre statements that he believed people around him were half-pig, half-human, and that his co-workers at a cabinet shop were cannibals who wanted to cook and eat him.

But one of the prosecution’s experts who examined Mr. Routh, Randall Price, a Dallas forensic psychologist, testified that Mr. Routh’s statements about pig people may have come not from psychosis but from TV shows, including an episode from “Seinfeld” and a reality show called “Boss Hog,” two of Mr. Routh’s favorite programs. The prosecution’s other expert, Dr. Michael Arambula, a San Antonio forensic psychiatrist who is president of the Texas Medical Board, said that the delusions of schizophrenics often had structure and details, but that Mr. Routh’s statements about cannibals lacked specifics.

“It doesn’t have content,” Dr. Arambula said.

In finding Mr. Routh guilty and not legally insane, jurors appeared to have sided with the prosecutors, who portrayed Mr. Routh not as a sympathetic, troubled veteran but as a callous killer who stopped at Taco Bell shortly after fleeing the scene and who knew his actions were wrong, a crucial part of the legal test of insanity.

Mental health experts who examined Mr. Routh told the jurors that he had not been directly involved in combat in Iraq and that he had lied about putting the bodies of babies in a mass grave in Haiti as part of an earthquake-relief deployment. Two experts who evaluated him for the prosecution testified that Mr. Routh was not insane and questioned whether he had exaggerated the trauma he experienced while in the Marines to get disability benefits and had tried to sound schizophrenic to get out of prison. 

Mr. Routh’s lawyers defended his claim of schizophrenia. They called to the stand Dr. Mitchell H. Dunn, a forensic psychiatrist who spent more than six hours with Mr. Routh last year and who testified that the defendant had been in a state of psychosis at the time of the attack and had shot the two men because he believed that they were “pig assassins” sent to kill him.

Dr. Dunn and Mr. Routh’s lawyers used Mr. Kyle’s own words to strengthen their point. As Mr. Routh sat in the back seat of Mr. Kyle’s truck on the drive to the range, Mr. Kyle sent a text message to Mr. Littlefield, who sat next to him in the passenger seat, writing, “This dude is straight-up nuts.” Mr. Littlefield responded with a text of his own, asking Mr. Kyle to “watch my six,” military parlance for “watch my back.” Dr. Dunn described the texts as “compelling evidence.”

The jury's decision comes two days after the movie "American Sniper", inspired by Mr Kyle's memoirs lost out on the Academy Award for Best Film. Mr Kyle's widow Taya Kyle attended the ceremony. The movie, starring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller, and trial ran alongside each other in a rare intersection between pop culture and criminal law.

Mr Kyle was a Navy SEAL Marine, a highly trained sniper who had such deadly accuracy that insurgents nicknamed him the 'Devil of Ramadi.' Clint Eastwood's adaption of his memoirs broke the box office on it's opening weekend taking in $90.2m. 

Since then, "American Sniper" went on to break Super Bowl Weekend records with $31.9m. The movie perhaps played a major part in the trial, with a movie theater showing "American Sniper" just three miles away from the courthouse. It is very possible that jurors had seen the film before being selected for trial.

“American Sniper” was widely seen in the Stephenville area and Mr. Kyle attended the local university, Tarleton State University, before he joined the Navy. Mr. Routh’s lawyers tried to postpone the trial and move it out of Erath County, but the judge turned them down.

“We’ve waited two years for God to get justice for us on behalf of our son,” Judy Littlefield, Mr. Littlefield’s mother, told reporters after the verdict. “And as always, God has proven to be faithful.”

Is Religious Affiliation linked to Terrorism?

It is not a ridiculous claim to say that the extreme concentration of terror attacks are in majority-Muslim countries. After the Charlie Hebdo attack, a Paris imam visited the scene and condemned the murders. He said; "These victims are martyrs, and I shall pray for them with all my heart." The imam, named as Hassen Chalghoumi, then went on to say that 95% of victims of terrorism are in fact Muslim.

His statement is not the first time that someone has voiced this opinion. In 2011, a report by the US government's National Counter-Terrorism Center, said; "In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97% of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years."

However, this report did not determine in what proportion of cases it had been possible to ascertain this information nor whether these cases were representative of the others. US based team, the Global Terrorism Database, compiles terrorism statistics also but does not determine religions of people killed or injured. GTD's Erin Miller said that between 2004 and 2013 about half of all the terrorist attacks, and 60% of fatalities due to terrorist attacks , took place in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - all of which host a majority Muslim population.

95% of terrorism victims being Muslim can be doubted, however Miller says that "it's not out of the realm of possibility." 

Terrorism is not a scorecard. Most people think of terrorist attacks such as the recent incident in Paris with Charlie Hebdo, 9/11, the 7/7 London tube and bus bombs or the Madrid train bombs. The overall number of deadly terrorist attacks in France, the US, UK and Spain is incredibly low by international standards.

Between 2004-2013, the UK suffered 400 terrorist attacks, mostly in Northern Ireland and mostly non-lethal. The US came under 131 attacks, fewer than 20 of which were lethal. France suffered 47. Whilst not belittling the devastation these attacks have had on these countries, when compared to Iraq which suffered 12,000 attacks, 8,000 of which were lethal, it does seem that Chalghoumi may have a point.

Miller says; "It's tempting for many people to try and turn it into almost a scorecard, trying to figure out which religious groups are more violent than others, and boil it down to this grossly oversimplified keeping of score, like it's a football game...This is a mistake. Most terrorist attacks are rooted in geopolitics. Religion is certainly a part of them, but it is not the only part."

Where is the Line Between Fantasy and Reality?

It wasn’t until June, 2014 that Japan banned possession of real images of child sexual abuse. In 2013, Japan’s police agency reported 1,644 offences since the 1999 act that outlawed the production and distribution of images of sexual abuse of children. This shockingly came 21 years after the UK. Also in 2013, the US State Department described Japan as an “international hub for the production and trafficking of child pornography.”

However, despite these acts Japan’s high cultural industry of manga still depicts children engaged in sexually explicit acts. It’s a disturbing thought but one that is not highly condoned. It certainly would be considered controversial at best and potentially illegal in countries such as the UK, Australia or Canada but in Japan it’s no big deal.

In fact, at a recent Sunshine Creation convention there were many stands displaying comics with this kind of disturbing content in them. One of the event organisers, Hide, says;

“Everyone knows that child abuse is not a good thing. But having that kind of emotion is free, enjoying imagining some sexual situation with a child is not prohibited.”

He then introduces the word "Lolicon", short for "Lolita complex" - the name for manga featuring young girls engaged in sexually explicit scenarios. It can involve incest, rape and other taboos, though Hide's tastes lie more with high-school romance.

"I like young-girl sexual creations, Lolicon is just one hobby of my many hobbies," he says. It is not just him however. When speaking of his wife’s opinion of his ‘hobby’; "She probably thinks no problem," he replies. "Because she loves young boys sexually interacting with each other."

Although material like this is not a huge part of Japan’s manga industry, it does attract a lot of attention. At the time of the June 2014 banning of real images of children, there were calls to also outlaw ‘virtual’ sexual images. This included characters in manga, anime and games. There was much debate in the Japanese Parliament but eventually they decided against it.

Sexual material involving adolescents is not uncommon, in fact it is a fairly mainstream interest in Japan. Japan’s legislators were apparently reluctant to put large numbers of manga fans on the wrong side of the law.

Fans like Hide argue they are just enjoying harmless fantasy. No child models or actors are involved, he says, so "there is no child abuse for creating sexual topic mangas".

Tokyo’s Akihabara district is the spiritual home of manga with bookshops lining the streets selling manga on every topic. In their adult sections, it is not difficult to find titles such as ‘Junior Rape’ or ‘Japanese Pre-teen Suite.’

"People get sexually excited by something, then become used to it," says Tomo, who works behind the counter in one of the adult stores. "So they are always looking for something new, and get sexually excited by young, immature women."

What is most worrying about the lackadaisical approach to outlawing virtual child pornography is that even if nobody is harmed in the creation of sexually explicit manga then it might normalise, facilitate, or even lead to an increase in sexual abuse.

Does this make Japan a society that turns a blind eye to extreme pornography; the sexualisation of young people? 

Je Suis Charlie

On Wednesday morning, a black Citreon C3 drove up to a building in Rue Nicolas-Appert. Two gunmen, donned in all black and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, got out of the car and entered the building.

After bursting into No. 6 the men realised they had got the wrong target. They moved further down the street to No. 10, the Charlie Hebdo offices. The men advanced inside where upon asking maintenance staff the location of the offices, shot caretaker Frederic Boisseau.

Corinne Rey, one of the magazine’s cartoonists, was forced to enter the code for the keypad entry to the newsroom on the second floor. Here a weekly editorial meeting was taking place. After asking for the paper’s editor Stephane Charbonnier, they opened fire, killing the editor and police bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro. Seven other journalists and a guest were also shot dead.

Police arrived at the scene as the gunmen were leaving. A police car blocked the gunmen’s escape and so the gunmen opened fire. After getting past this car, the gunmen headed south before doubling back on the northern carriageway. Here they stopped the car and video footage shows the gunmen get out of the car and shoot police officer Ahmed Merabet. One of the men then walked up to Merabet and shot him dead at close range.

The gunmen abandoned their car and shortly before midday today police lost track of them. Paris has been put on maximum alert with an extra 500 police deployed on the streets of the capital.

Twelve people were killed in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices: eight journalists, two police officers, a caretaker and a visitor.

From left: Economist Bernard Maris, cartoonists Georges Wolinski, Jean "Cabu" Cabut, Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier, Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac and Philippe Honore and Michel Renaud.

·        

     Charlie Hebdo editor and cartoonist Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier, 47, who had been living under police protection since receiving death threats

Cartoonists Jean "Cabu" Cabut, 76, Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac, 57, Georges Wolinski, 80, and Philippe Honore, 73

·         Economist and regular magazine columnist Bernard Maris, 68, known to readers as Uncle Bernar

·         Mustapha Ourrad, proof-reader

·         Elsa Cayat, psychoanalyst and columnist, the only woman killed

·         Michel Renaud, who was visiting from the city of Clermont-Ferrand

·         Frederic Boisseau, 42, caretaker, who was in the reception area at the time of the attack

·         Police officers Franck Brinsolaro, who acted as Charb's bodyguard, and Ahmed Merabet, 42, who was shot dead while on the ground

·         BBC Special Correspondent Fergal Keane has filed a report from the banlieue, or suburb, where one of the Charlie Hebdo gunman lived.

·         He says that for many in France, the word banlieue is "often loaded with negative association".

·         "In the minds of some French, these estates can be breeding grounds for radicalism," he adds.

·         "France is outraged but not yet polarised between Muslims and the rest. That isn't to underestimate the potential for a much wider crisis.

·         "Muslim elders say the key to tackling the problem is breaking the power of radical Islam among the alienated young."

• Al-Qaeda group 'praises attack'

Al-Qaeda's branch in North Africa has praised the attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo, according to an organisation which monitors jihadi activity.

Site Intelligence Group said that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had also issued a reminder that Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda's founder, had threatened those who mocked the Prophet Muhammad

Arab ambassadors in Paris have denounced the Charlie Hebdo attack as a "barbaric terrorist act" and assured that their countries were engaged in the fight against terrorism.

In a press statement they said "the member countries of the Arab League are engaged, alongside other members of the international community in the struggle against terrorism, intolerance and extremism".

The two main suspects in the Islamist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris are said to have robbed a service station in the north of France.

They stole food and petrol, firing shots as they struck at the roadside stop near Villers-Cotterets in the Aisne region, French media report.

The gunmen have now been named as Said and Cherif Kouachi. French media say Cherif, 32, was jailed in 2008 and had long been known to police for militant Islamist activities.

Cherif, who also went by the name Abu Issen, was part of the "Buttes-Chaumont network" that helped send would-be jihadists to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq after the US-UK invasion in 2003.

He had grown up in an orphanage in Rennes, north-west France, and had trained as a fitness coach before joining his brother in Paris, Liberation newspaper reports. In the capital he worked as a pizza delivery man.

Police detained him in 2005 just as he was about to board a plane for Syria - at the time the gateway for jihadists hoping to fight US troops in Iraq.

n 2008 he was jailed for three years, for his role in sending militants to Iraq, but 18 months of the sentence was suspended, Liberation reports.

The brothers had allegedly frequented a mosque in the Stalingrad district of Paris, where they came under the influence of a radical imam called Farid Benyettou. He reportedly encouraged them to study Islam at his home and at a Muslim centre in their neighbourhood.

A key figure in the Buttes-Chaumont network was Boubaker al-Hakim, a militant linked to al-Qaeda resistance against US forces in Iraq, a French expert on Islamists says.

Jean-Pierre Filiu, an expert at Sciences-Po University in Paris, says a French court jailed Hakim for seven years in 2008, at the same time as Cherif, along with Farid Benyettou, who got six years. That action broke up the jihadist network they had created.

In 2010 Cherif Kouachi was named in connection with a plot to spring another Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, from jail. Belkacem used to be in the outlawed Algerian Islamic Armed Group (GIA) and was jailed for life in 2002 for a Paris metro station bombing in 1995 which injured 30 people.

At 7pm tonight, the Eiffel Tower went dark as a sign of mourning for the twelve victims.

                

Siege in Sydney

Tuesday morning marked the end of a 16-hour siege in a local cafe in Sydney, Australia. Central Sydney was in lockdown Monday morning as a gunman entered the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Martin Place and seized 17 hostages.

Five of these hostages managed to escape later Monday afternoon. Several more escaped early on Tuesday morning.

• At 9.45 AM local time, police were called to the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Sydney following reports of an armed robbery. Soon after, it emerges that it is a gunman holding a number of people hostage.
• Between 16.00 - 17.00, three men sprint to safety from the cafe's side door, shortly followed by two women.
• Just after 2.00 AM on Tuesday morning more hostages manage to escape. Just after this commandos storm the cafe and the remaining hostages escape.
• At 2.45 AM police officially confirm the end of the siege and later report the deaths of three people, including the gunman.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn would not say whether the gunman had shot the two hostages himself. She said that all the hostages had 'acted courageously'.

The gunman has been identified as Man Haron Monis. He is a self-styled Muslim cleric, and sought asylum in Australia in 1996. Despite having a history of religiously inspired activism, officials say there is as yet, no link to international Islamist movements.

He was convicted of sending offensive letters to families of deceased Australian soliders in 2009. IN 2013, he was charged with being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife but was given bail. He also has faced more than 40 sexual and indecent assault charges.

His website, now closed down, had hosted a series of videos supporting terrorism and blaming rape victims for their attacks.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has questioned why Monis was not on the country's terror watch list. He has said that the government would examine why Monis was given bail.

Abbott says Monis was being monitored by domestic spy agency Asio in 2008 because of the letters but then dropped off watch lists.

"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 the community?" he asked.

An investigation has been launched into the police operation and the police are also investigating the motives of Monis.

How did an Iranian refugee who already faced multiple criminal charges manage to get a gun?

Under Australian law, pump-action or self-loading shotguns holding five or fewer rounds are strongly restricted. Only farmers, occupational shooters, collectors and some clay target shooters can own them.

Monis had claimed his siege was part of an Islamic State (IS) attack and he forced his captives to hold up what appeared to be a black Islamic banner in the café window.

But exactly what he hoped he would achieve remains unclear and experts say his profile and his actions do not fit the usual criteria applied to terrorists.

Australia's former spy chief David Irvine has raised the alarm about Muslim Australians travelling to Syria and Iraq to fight with IS.

"Lone wolf" terrorists and suicide bombers returning to Australia were a great threat to security, he said in September.

'Monis simply didn't have the standard hallmarks of a terrorist,' says James Brown, Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

While not underplaying the fear Monis' captives would have experienced, Mr Brown says Monis could have made things much more terrifying.

With a terrorist attack, "you plan to kill as many people as you can to create havoc and fear and you plan for a clear outcome, and to use the hostages for leverage for what you want," he says - all of which stand in contrast to what appeared to be an unplanned and unfocussed attack by Monis.

"The reason people are reaching out to talk about it as an act of terrorism is because IS has put out a call for individuals to carry out such acts."

The final question that some people want answered is why Monis was allowed into the country.

He sought asylum from Iran, citing political persecution by the Iranian government.

It is something Mr Abbott says a joint federal and state government review will examine, along with his successful applications for permanent residency and citizenship.

Police have named the two people who died as barrister Katrina Dawson, 38, and cafe manager Tori Johnson, 34.

Katrina Dawson, 38, had been having coffee with a pregnant colleague when the gunman walked in to the Lindt Chocolat Cafe.

Ms Dawson had three young children with her husband, Paul Smith.

She worked at Eight Selbourne chambers in the Central Business District, not far from the cafe.

The Sydney Morning Herald carried a tribute from Australia's former Governor-General Quentin Bryce, who was the Women's College principal at the University of Sydney when Ms Dawson was studying there as an undergraduate.

"Brilliant mind, joie de vivre spilling over, talented sportswoman, one of those rare natural leaders. Confident, courageous, out-front, articulate, warm and funny, but thoughtful, gentle and understanding too."

Ms Bryce added: "I admired her strength of purpose and character. We knew she had a great future ahead of her, a life of achievement and contribution."

Tori Johnson had worked at the Lindt Chocolat Cafe for two years. Before that he had worked at various restaurants in Sydney and the US.

Police have not confirmed reports in local media that Mr Johnson tried to wrestle the weapon away from the gunman in order to help other hostages escape.

His parents said that their son would live forever in their memories.

"We are so proud of our beautiful boy Tori," their statement said. "The most amazing life partner, son and brother we could ever wish for."

His parents also thanked police, armed forces and emergency services for their "tireless efforts" and the public for their response to the shootings.

"We'd like to thank not only our friends and loved ones for their support, but the people of Sydney; Australia and those around the world for reaching out with their thoughts and prayers," they said.

Tributes to the victims of the siege come in the form of flowers, covering the whole of Martin Place.