The Lindt Cafe Hostage Siege

The Lindt Café Hostage Siege – Sydney, AUS – Guest On the 15th of November 2014, a terrorist took over the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Martin Place in the heart of Sydney, Australia, holding 18 customers and staff hostage, creating a siege that would last for over 16 hours. Although numerous hostages escaped, by the time the event concluded, two innocent people were dead, and four others were injured.

For 10 years, this incident was suppressed under a government-mandated gag order. This prevented the New South Wales Police Tactical Operations Unit or TOU for short, from ever publicly revealing even their names. As a result, despite a detailed and scathing coroner's inquest report, the largest and most expensive in Australian history, there's been very little discussion about what actually happened that night from a tactical perspective.

My guest today is Ben Besant. Ben, or Officer A as he was identified in the coroner's report, was the lead member of the alpha team during the intervention and the officer who engaged and killed the terrorist. He's currently the author of a book “Tiger, Tiger, Tiger”, which details not only what happened that night, but also explains a very personal battle to recover his mental health following the Lindt Cafe siege.

In keeping with the standard policy of the debrief, we will not be discussing the name, objective, or affiliation of the terrorist in the hope that time will erase his memory. We will of course be discussing the names of the team, and in this case the hostages because they are heroes and need to be remembered. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Ben Besant.

My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units.

As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their sToryes in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Jon Becker: Ben, thanks so much for being here with me, man.

Ben Besant: Too easy. I appreciate you having me on.

Jon Becker: So, you know, as an American and the majority of the audience is American, I don't think we truly understand this kind of Australian policing. So maybe a good place for us to start is kind of how Australian policing is structured.

Ben Besant: Yeah, of course. In our conversations we had brief discussions on it and it's very-very different. Policing is more a state responsibility. So for the state of New South Wales which is the highest population Sydney most viewers will know about. The police force has roughly 16,000 members and our tactical team, the TOU Tactical Operations Unit is responsible for counter-terrorism within the whole state. It's a state responsibility.

We do have federal police but very different powers to say the FBI. They would never come in and step over or take over situations from us. So for us as a unit, the Tactical Operations Unit, we do all normal say SWAT training similar to your units, but on top of that, we also as discussed have the responsibility of the counter-terrorism response for the state. We do above and beyond other courses.

Jon Becker: We have states also obviously 50 of them but our states are considerably smaller politically the federal government has a lot more power in Australia it is like the state like New South Wales is is the large political divide and the federal government just kind of ties them together.

Ben Besant: Yeah. There are certain things each state is responsible for. So for New South Wales policing is the state's responsibility as say medical and things like that. Defense is still a federal responsibility.

But for us to deploy defense personnel, we obviously have our own special forces units. Over here we have Tag East which is made up of the commandos who do have a terrorism response but to be deployed that needs to go to the prime minister who's to then declare martial law before they can be deployed which is quite a huge thing down here in Australia. It hasn't happened before. Hence the reason why our unit are trained to deal with counter-terrorism.

If there was say a Mumbai style incident down in our state where we were stretched beyond our capabilities mostly numbers wise that's when I see the tag east special forces being also deployed but they wouldn't necessarily take over.

We would work alongside them. That's why we've done training together for situations like that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. You're not quite as militant towards government as we are but have that same kind of mindset about strong federal government versus state government and deployment of defense personnel is not a particularly popular topic among the civilian population.

Ben Besant: No, not at all. No.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that makes sense. So, let's talk a little bit about your career.

How long had you been on? I mean, let's look at it from, you know, from the perspective of this incident, which was 10 years ago. How long have you been on and what assignments has you worked on prior to TAU?

Ben Besant: Yes. So, I first joined the police force in 2001 where I went to the police academy for roughly a year. Then I was first deployed to Bankstown local area command which is predominantly Middle Eastern people living there plus a Vietnamese Pacific Islander population. Where I grew up on acreage so you'd say the main population out there were Caucasian. So, for me to be deployed into that area which at the time was known to be the busiest and yeah, most of violence coming out of that area in Sydney and Australia I believe.

So, when I was at the police academy of course being a cocky young bloke that's where I wanted to go. So yeah, I started there. I spent say street cop. Then I went into the proactive unit, which is sort of street level crime gangs, that sort of thing.

where I was dressed in plain clothes, undercover type work.

And yeah, after that I applied to join the TOU, the Tactical Operations Unit. and did that that selection which was in itself brutal and managed to get selected into the TOU after that. So that was 2008 I believe.

Jon Becker: So, you had been on the team for fiveish years when this incident occurred.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Yeah. Closer to six I believe.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay. And talk to me a little bit. I mean, obviously without going into a great deal of detail, kind of give me an overview of the team. How big is it? We talked a little bit about the mission set, but like how big is the team? You know, what are the resources? That kind of thing.

Ben Besant: Yeah, I believe full strength there's no you're not allocated to set teams. Is just whoever's roosted on the day. But within that, you're on call a lot and you join the unit knowing that it doesn't really matter what you're doing if you're on annual leave or anything. You can be called in for a large incident such as Lindt. As I said we're responsible for the whole state but then you have parttime units throughout the state too who are trained to a certain level know any level and if there's an incident there that requires us to be deployed they'll lock down the scene and make it safe and then we'll either be flowing there or deploy there as quickly as we can.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, it's not an uncommon model in other countries where you have, you know, small regional assets, but they're not counter-terrorism, they're not hostage rescue, they're search warrant capability. Is that kind of what it is?

Ben Besant: Yeah. Oh, they are trained to do entries and stuff like that. In exigent circumstances, as you can imagine, if we can't get there in time, they are trained to do that. but our training is roughly a year of training, whereas theirs is obviously because they're a part-time unit and they may be detectives or other units. Their training isn't anything like our level.

Jon Becker: And TAU, I mean this is the full-time job of TOU is just tactical.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Yeah definitely. It's a broad spectrum of jobs we even attend.

Yeah, so mostly sieges, arm defenders, basically to the lay person, any job where there's someone with firearms or weapons who are willing to use it on police or hostages from that basic level all the way up to counterterrorism jobs.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. I think that kind of gives us context for where the team is. I mean this was 10 years ago. So, let's kind of go back in the way back machine here and talk about what is the political environment. I mean obviously in 2014/15 there's still two wars going on. But in Australia what is the political environment like related to terrorism?

Ben Besant: Yeah, obviously that's post 9/11 and there were obviously terrorism events all around the western world including here in Australia. We had been doing a lot of terrorism counter-terrorism work leading up to it.

Lots of search warrants and arrests. We had a large cell in operation down here with between 40 to 50 members who were planning to execute some pretty horrendous crimes on civilians here which we managed to arrest. That was a joint counter-terrorism operation that involved the federal police, our police counter-terrorism unit and AIO which is I suppose in a roundabout way similar to your CIA. So, there was a joint task force set up for this and we were the people arresting them. So, we'd be doing lots of arrests. We've been getting daily briefings. We knew like our threat terror level was at its highest and within us as a unit, we believed it was just a matter of time till a big incident happened.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And if my memory serves correctly, you guys interrupted or disrupted a cell that was planning to just grab a civilian off the street and behead him or something, right?

Ben Besant: Yeah, that was that was one of one of many things they were planning. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I remember that one got some news coverage and there was conversation because obviously that's a pretty horrific thing to do.

Ben Besant: Yeah. A lot of it is still not public exactly what their plans were.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Ben Besant: But yeah, we only managed to get to them just in time. So, there was lots of things happening just weeks before the two counter-terrorism police officers down in Melbourne in VicTorya. So, our second largest state, they had been attacked down there. So, yeah, it was the feeling that it was imminent.

There was something due to happen at any time.

Jon Becker: So, from a team standpoint, you guys are right on point at this point.

You're training hard. You're queued up and ready to go and kind of expecting to see something as teams all were at that point in the environment, right? Like there was a lot of specific threat intelligence that was getting teams spun up. But from a readiness standpoint, you guys are about as good as you're going to be at that point in time.

Ben Besant: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we were all ready. I don't recall exactly, but I imagine the annual leave was cancelled, so everyone was ready. And even within ourselves, we were prepared too.

Jon Becker: So, okay. So, let's walk forward to the event. How's your day start?

Let’s start with kind of how you start your day and then we'll walk through the timeline of the event.

Ben Besant: Yeah. So, we do 12-hour shifts. the day started with just a morning briefing where the briefing would have included terrorism briefing or potential things happening.

After that I actually was sent to a police psychologist because our unit is obviously exposed to constant trauma. The police force recommends that we see a psychologist every 3 to 6 months or so which sadly is mostly just a box ticking exercise I believe. We all knew what to say. We all wanted to stay operational. So yeah, I just completed that. Walking back into the office, I got the vibe straight away that something was wrong. There weren't many people in the office. And yeah, I just got the feeling instantly something was wrong. As I walked in, one of my sergeants, team leader, came up and just said, "Grab your grab your stuff.

We're going." My response was, "So, the big ones happened then." And he just said, "Yes." So yeah, at that moment I knew something big was happening.

Grabbed on my personal gear, went downstairs, loaded up all my vest and firearm, everything quickly, and then we jumped into the armored vehicle and headed down to Martin Place, which is located right in the center of Sydney.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Maybe just kind of give context. So, this cafe is, you know, we think of Lindt as a chocolate company, but you know, in addition to a chocolate company, they obviously have cafes in Sydney, Australia. So, give me some context for that.

Ben Besant: Australia is a very cafe culture. I would say we have cafes for everything. Within the Lindt Cafe, obviously, they sell all their chocolates and hot chocolate and everything like that. Where it was located was right in the heart of Sydney in the CBD where all the large office buildings were. The Reserve Bank was just opposite the Reserve Bank of Australia. We had the big law offices just up the road and directly opposite was one of our largest television stations, Channel 7, who actually managed to broadcast the whole incident. So, as you can imagine it shut down entire blocks of the city and to an extent shut down the city.

So not sure how much plan he put into it but where he did it was the perfect location to terrorize and upset the whole of Sydney.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean you're across the street from a news station that's going to watch the whole thing play out and you're right in the heart of downtown. Yeah, so everybody in Australia is going to know what's happening in 10 minutes.

Ben Besant: Exactly. Yeah. That's how I know.

Jon Becker: So, he walks in like 8:30 in the morning if I remember correctly. And like this cafe is a place you could go and have a coffee with a friend and when at the point that he enters there are obviously people working there, but there are other people that are just there having a breakfast or a coffee or something else, right?

Ben Besant: Yeah. Exactly. And as he walked in, he walked in with his backpack on. He did have a sawn off shotgun at the time, but that was hidden. He's walked in quite casually and taken a seat. So, there were no initial concerns by anyone in there before he called the manager Tory Johnson over to his table. And that's when he notified him that they were under attack by Islamic State before he gave them a message that he wanted to read out to the police.

Jon Becker: Okay. So that's about an hour 10 if I remember correctly. Like we're talking like 9:44, 9:45.

Ben Besant: Yeah.

Jon Becker: He goes in at like 8:30 and it's roughly an hour 15 later that he gets a hold of Tory and at that point pulls a shotgun out.

Ben Besant: Yeah. I don't have the timeline ahead in front of me, but I believe that he didn't take that long to do that. Yeah, he walked in, sat down, made himself comfortable, called the waiter, waitresses came over to him, and that's when he's called Tory Johnson pretty much straight away. From there, yeah, he's told the manager to lock all the doors, that he has a bomb and he's not afraid to detonate it. So, my understanding was quite quick.

Jon Becker: Got it. And I mean foreshadowing a little bit Tory Johnson's actions on this day certainly are ridiculously brave and kind of above reproach and he's going to be a theme throughout the day. But it's certainly worth mentioning that his heroism starts at the minute that he's threatened.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Extremely brave man throughout the entire day 100%.

Jon Becker: So, at some point after that happens, the police are notified, you guys are notified. How long, assuming it's like 9:30 something, when did you guys arrive on scene?

Ben Besant: Yeah. So, as I said, a lot of operators had been deployed before I came into the office. As soon as I did, that's when myself, my sergeant, and another operator jumped into our armored vehicle. We drove, obviously as fast as we could into, I think we pulled up on Elizabeth Street, so it's sort of down the bottom below the cafe. On my arrival, I was deployed onto a team and allocated my position which was first cover man, first shooter behind the shield man.

On arrival there were a lot of general duties, police, like street cops moving a lot of distraught people away from the scene. From our perspective there was intelligence coming in basically by the second different intelligence coming in.

There had been before my arrival and before the TAU's arrival, there was a brave highway patrol officer who had approached the cafe and looked in, observed in through the glass doors in the foyer and he had seen the terrorist with his backpack with wires protruding and with armed with a pumpaction shotgun. So, we had that intel right from the beginning and I believed as did my fellow members that it was serious right from the get- go.

Jon Becker: So, he doesn't fire a shot though at this point, right? He makes a threat that he has a bomb. He's got a saw off shotgun. He has the bank customer, or I mean the cafe customer. Tory locks the doors so that everybody is theoretically trapped inside of the cafe.

Ben Besant: Yeah. On top of that, through the message that Tory Johnson was told to read out to police, he's told in that message there was not only that he has a bomb and he's not afraid to use it, but there were three other devices in three separate locations throughout the city. He also insinuated that he had fellow members working with him and if police were to approach them, they would be detonated in different locations throughout the city.

Jon Becker: Got it. This is getting complicated really fast.

Ben Besant: Yeah, it is. And right from the beginning, we knew this was a a big incident. It was one we had to be very wary of.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, it makes sense. So, there were 18 hostages, suspects with a bomb, maybe three other bombs, who claimed to be Confederates, armed with a sawed-off shotgun. The team gets there and obviously I'm assuming at that point you're deploying into a containment position to kind of surround the problem and see what happens.

Ben Besant: Yeah. We had three Sierra teams, three sniper teams deployed to different locations for observations and we had two entry teams. We were the primary entry team being the alpha team. We actually moved our location onto the top of Philip Street. So that's on the top side of the cafe which is nice and close to respond where we were deployed to a truck loading bay. And there was a second entry team, the Bravo team, and they were deployed onto the other side.

So, there's two main entries to the cafe. It's on the corner of Philip Street and Martin Place. Primary entry point where our responsibilities on the very corner.

And then on the bottom side of the cafe there's a large foyer.

So, I'd also like to say that the cafe was on the ground floor of a multi-story building that included a lot of office spaces and a lot of people above the cafe, which was also of concern when we first deployed.

Jon Becker: So, I mean, this is kind of your typical cafe in a high-rise building, right? Where it has its own street entrance, which is on the corner.

Ben Besant: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And then it's got a secondary entrance that comes off of like an entry foyer where you might go in to take an elevator up to one of the offices or something.

Ben Besant: Yeah, exactly. There was a lift well for the offices and that was where the second entry point was.

Jon Becker: Got it. So, so if we're if we're picturing it in our brain kind of the one side for the problem is going to be, you know, the street and then the 41 side is going to be that second street and that the primary entrance is going to be right there on kind of that 4-1 corner and then the secondary entrance, the one off the entrance is on the two side.

Ben Besant: Yes. Yep.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Ben Besant: Correct.

Jon Becker: All right. So, as you guys are setting up this thing starting to evolve, what is the next piece of information or what is the next action that occurs as we're evolving? Is the guy negotiating at this point?

Ben Besant: At no point throughout the entire incident did he ever speak directly with police negotiators. The only communication that he would have would be through one of his hostages. Then he would make the hostages ring and put his commands to the police negotiators through them. So yeah, at no point did he speak directly with police negotiators which disappointingly to us we never had communicated to us.

Jon Becker: Oh, so you guys are maybe thinking that they're negotiating and in fact there's kind of not a negotiation taking place. He's just making demands.

Ben Besant: He's making demands. But we're not told he hasn't spoken to police negotiators. From our standpoint, that's actually quite concerning that he's refusing to have direct contact with police negotiators.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Because if he's a “professional terrorist”, and I want to use that in air quotes, he's going to negotiate, right? If you look at the, you know, the incidents in Paris or any place else, the ones that were going to negotiate that were professional, as professional as you can be at this, the point is to negotiate, right? The point is to get the message out. And so, right away, you're kind of faced with this weird dilemma of he doesn't want to talk and you're not even being told that.

Ben Besant: Yeah. But it's also concerning that that also confirmed his motives.

It was purely for the purpose of terrorism. He didn't want anything out of it. He never wanted money. He never wanted anything other than to terrorize the people of Sydney and everyone inside. So, there was no demand other than he wanted some Islamic flags brought to him. He wanted to have a telephone conversation with our prime minister who was Tony Abbott at the time and demands like that. So, for us in the team and on a tactical level if he's not willing to speak with police negotiators, it doesn't feel as if that he ever had any other intention other than for things to play out the way they eventually did.

Jon Becker: So, I'm assuming at this point you guys are forming kind of an Emergency Action plan and obviously deploying on that. At what point do you start to think about, you know, a direct action or Deliberate Action Plan?

Ben Besant: Yeah. So, that's our standard operating procedure. Get into position, lock the place down, and then get an Emergency Action proposed and in place, which was done quite soon after we were in a position that had been approved, which is completely necessary for a job like that. Then my understanding is our team leader other team leaders and our tactical coordinator (so our boss who's in the command post with all the other bosses running the job) were pushing for a “Deliberate Action” or :direct action" as you call it the entire day and at no point during the day was it ever approved which was definitely of a large concern to us.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, you guys have submitted a plan, but they'll just call it the leadership above the team is not approving the plan even though you guys have submitted it.

Ben Besant: Yeah. And, I know that our boss, our inspector, was pushing for it the entire day, even trying to change certain things to see if they would approve it. but at no point throughout the day was it ever imp ever approved the Would you like me to talk about the whole management structure of a job?

Jon Becker: Yeah, that'd be great.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Yeah. So, for us if we're deployed to a job, we are still under the responsibility of the superintendent or the commander of that region that we are deployed into. And then above them are other ranks also that have a say on decision-m deputy commissioner stuff like that region coordinators. But for us we are never given control that they will never hand control of the job to us and our bosses. So, all that we really have is our inspector who is our tactical coordinator who is in the command post with also one of the bosses from the negotiators and then their big boss. All our inspector can do is advise them on what he believes is the best thing to do in this situation. And obviously in this situation direct action was obviously what we would have liked and would have been the best for the situation but that's all he can do. He can't approve it or anything.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So you guys are a service provider.

Ben Besant: Yeah.

Jon Becker: To whoever the incident commander and the local regional commander is. It's you're there if they want to use a tactical solution, but you are not in control of the situation and cannot make a decision for tactical intervention, they have to make a decision at a command level that yeah, you guys can go ahead.

Ben Besant: Yeah, exactly. But certain things like once they've approved our Emergency Action, if our bosses deem that it fits the triggers of that Emergency Action. In this incident, the trigger was as high as a hostage being executed or in immediate risk of serious harm. As soon as that happens, our boss can step in and initiate the Emergency Action. But other than that, yeah, there all the decisions are made above him to an extent.

Jon Becker: And you know, one of the themes that's going to play out here over the, 16 hours of this event is that nothing is happening. Nothing bad is happening right now, which is I think, and the coroner's report seems to substantiate that the fact that nothing has happened makes the command staff even more unlikely to make a decision, right? It creates kind of a Decision Inertia for the whole command staff in this instant because like, well, he hasn't killed anybody, so why should we move now? We’re winning 'cause nobody's been killed.

Ben Besant: Yeah, I can only speculate as to what they were thinking within the command post. But the big issue and what made this job so different for us is if it was just one man with an arm with a shotgun that's quite easy to contain and deal with. The whole issue right from the beginning was a bomb. We do lots of training with the military in relation to that and everything about the large backpack with wires coming out said to us that it was in fact a bomb.

As I say I'm speculating again but if the command had initiated a Deliberate Action earlier in the day and that resulted in him detonating the bomb ultimately that that just leads to every hostage within the place being killed from our deployment and potentially a lot of us. So, I can somewhat defend a lot of the decisions made in relation to holding off purely because yeah if we had gone in and that resulted in him detonating that bomb and killing everyone inside as you can imagine that's not a best-case outcome.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, this is obviously a very complicated situation. So, if my notes serve me correctly, 11 a.m.ish there is approval given that if he releases hostages, he'll get, you know, time to appear on the news.

Ben Besant: Okay. From our standpoint, we didn't have a lot of that sort of thing communicated to us. I'd like to say also from our position on the street and our operators, it was very concerning the lack of intelligence that we were getting fed to us and what we believe the command knew of the incident.

As I discussed before, we had three sniper three Sierra teams up in different locations trying to provide observations into the cafe which was very limited.

There were only small windows. There was also a stencil also. The front windows had hostages all standing there with black Islamic flags with white writing all over them which also blocked a lot of the view. My shield man Paulie and I approached my sergeant and my team leader with these concerns saying, “We need to have some more intelligence. We don't know what's going on inside the cafe because from my standpoint, we don't know what he's doing.” If he's executing hostages, we don't have any intelligence. He gave us the approval to move forward. So, my shield man and I pushed forward to the first of four windows, only small windows, and managed to look into the cafe.

During that time, it would have been nearly up to 30 minutes or so. I managed to observe a lot of the hostages inside the cafe. They were in an extremely distraught and distressed state. A lot of them were visibly crying. Some of them were shaking. Clearly traumatized or terrorized.

I did manage to observe him at quite a few different points. I saw him as, as described, male middle eastern with a big backpack, a black camel, camel mountain backpack, sorry. It was very full, like it had something in there, which I believed at the time was a bomb, and I could clearly see two wires protruding from the bottom of it. He also had a pump-action shotgun that he carried on him the whole time. Every time I observed him move past or walk past any of the windows, he always had a hostage directly in front of him either to their back or to the back of their head.

Yeah, so we managed to provide a lot of intelligence as to what was going on inside the cafe, feed that back to the command post and yeah, then at some point he did see us and grabbed one of the hostages Louisa Hope I know her name, know her still to this day, he's reefed her to her feet, pointing the shotgun to the back of her head and I couldn't hear him, but speculate he was screaming in our direction. So, at that point we did back off. But yes, we desperately needed intelligence as to what was happening inside the cafe. We needed to observe him, his mannerism, the way he's acting, and intelligence on the bomb and the shotgun.

Jon Becker: And just from a Sierra standpoint, the Sierra units are kind of across the street from the cafe in elevated positions. But there's also, if I remember correctly, there's kind of complications, right? Like one of them is a bank. Like there's a lot of glass problems here. These are not, single pane glasses. It's thick, heavy. Yeah. The likelihood of you shooting through two sets of windows and like there's a lot of intervening factors here for the Sierra teams.

Ben Besant: Yeah, there is. And a lot of observation issues. A lot of the criticism that came out after the incident was why our snipers didn't take a shot. In reference to what you're saying, if there's glass at their end, that's obviously not an issue. We can take that out with an explosive charge if need be or we have ways of cutting through glass at their end.

I'd say on top of that for reason why I still to this day don't think a sniper shot would have been the most effective in this situation is because a lot of the time during this height and time of terrorism a common thing was to have a dead man switch attached to a backpack bomb. And as I'm sure and your listeners know, the moment he's shot neither killed nor incapacitated, he released this dead man switch which detonates the bomb. So, on killing him through a sniper shot that ultimately can well can and will detonate which would kill everyone inside the cafe. But on top of that, through my observations, of him walking around the cafe, he never exposed himself to any of the windows or doors or position where he could be shot if he didn't have a hostage in front of him, and he always had the shotgun on their back or to the back of their head.

Being a trained sniper myself, I know that if you were to shoot him, the body's natural reaction is to spasm and ultimately pull the trigger. Then at least one hostage is killed. Also, there are ways to obviously stop that by shooting the oblongata at top of the brain stem which is an extremely difficult shot at the best of times let alone from an elevated position through glass as well. Not saying it wasn't an option but also at the time of our entry through our intelligence we hadn't been notified. The building manager at the time didn't know that this used to be an old bank. So, the glass was actually bullet-resistant glass which would have required a special glass cutting round as well. So yeah, I'd say there'd be a lot of issues with taking a sniper shot throughout the day.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, you can see why, 'cause I know that was in reading the report and reading all the news coverage that was one, you know, well, why didn't they just shoot him? And it's not just as simple as just shooting him.

Ben Besant: No, no, no. Like I said, the whole incident just completely changed the moment. There's a bomb in there and we don't know the details of the bomb.

Jon Becker: So, what is the next significant event from the team's perspective that occurs?

Ben Besant: So, as you can imagine, we were there for many hours. We had very little intelligence coming back to us, which is very concerning. I'd seen the distraught hostages with the bomb. Well, sorry, with the backpack, with the wires and through all my training and through the military, I 100% believed it was a bomb, as did my team and upper management all believed it was a bomb. Very little intelligence came through from our Sierras snipers because he really didn't move around the cafe so much. There were little bits of intel coming out but not much.

The next big incident I'd say was when the two hostages escaped from the Philip Street Martin place corner. So, which was only 30 m in front of us without warning. They burst out of there as soon as we saw them. We called for them to come to us. And then as we're grabbing them and moving them to a position of safety, the fire door just in front of our position, a Lindt Cafe worker burst out of that just in front of us. So, we also removed him to safety.

Jon Becker: So, he starts with 18 hostages and three escape.

Ben Besant: Three escape at this point. Yeah.

Jon Becker: And that's 3:30 if my notes are correct. About 3:30 in the afternoon.

So, we're 7 hours into the incident before the first three hostages' kind of take it into their own hands to get away.

Ben Besant: Yeah. And it was a surprise to us. We didn't know they could manage to escape. So, it's already 7 hours as you can imagine. Sydney is in full sun. It was a long day. There were points of ups and downs where we believed we were going to be deployed and sent in under an EA and didn't. So, to see the hostages come out was a good thing that they were now safe. But in my mind and my fellow operator's mind that was of concern because we believe that would elevate the terrorist to the point of having to take action because his directions have been disregarded.

Jon Becker: Yeah. He lost control of at least some of the situation. He's lost some of his collateral. You would assume that he is going to be more agitated.

Ben Besant: Yeah, that's a pretty safe assumption. We thought from a tactical level, other demands he'd made to speak to the prime minister Tony Abbott had been denied. Having ISIS flags brought to him had been denied. So, we knew there were a number of things that had already been denied. And then to see hostages escaping now was obviously good that they are safe but at the same time quite concerning.

From what we heard back from upper management they didn't seem to see it that way at all which was also concerning to us.

Jon Becker: You're again kind of getting in their brains but like what was their perception of that like oh this is a good sign things are going well?

Ben Besant: That's what it felt like. As I said I can only speculate but yeah making no decision and sitting it out has resulted in hostages escaping and he hasn't actually executed or done anything as yet. So yeah, speculation says that they were probably happy with how things were progressing.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So the hostage escaped at 3:37 if my timeline is correct and shortly thereafter the news reports that hostages escaped.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Yep. As I stated there, the whole incident was being live streamed from across the road with the large television station which was still live streaming it. But there were also just about every other media who were further down the street streaming all of these incidents coming through.

Jon Becker: And what effect on the suspect or the terrorist does the news coverage have?

Ben Besant: From where we are, we didn't really get feedback on that so I couldn't really say.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. And then what is the next thing that happens? Two more hostages escape if I remember correctly.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Yeah. I believe that was from the other side in the foyer. They managed to escape, managed to unlock the door and then run to safety outside as well.

Jon Becker: Where did the first three escape from? Was it the front?

Ben Besant: Yeah, that was the front. Yeah. So, that was pretty much right in front of our position. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So, the first three escape from the main, let's call it the main door on the corner. The next two escape from the foyer. So, he's lost containment on both sides of his problem.

Ben Besant: Yes. Yep.

Jon Becker: At what point do you guys next hear from him or or what is the next thing that occurs after the now two more hostages? Did you guys have a chance to debrief these hostages as they're coming out?

Ben Besant: Yeah. So, initially with the first three, the Lindt cafe employee, my team leader did try speaking to him briefly, just because we were desperate on the street to get some intelligence. Everything he said, I could overhear. And he was just that traumatized and in shock. It was just garble. He was just screaming, "You got to get in there. You got to get in there. He is going to kill everyone!” So from there, they're then handed over to police negotiators and specialists to try and get further intelligence from them. But yeah, we didn't hear anything back from that.

From our standpoint, as I said, where we're quite concerned now numerous hostages have come out, his demands have been refused. The hostages aren't listening to him and are now escaping on their own. So, as you can imagine, we were of the opinion that he's completely enraged. Our bosses kept pushing for Deliberate Action, direct action which as I stated throughout the day, was never approved. The tag east guys. So the special forces commandos actually set up a mock cafe and they tried out the Deliberate Action, direct action as you call it and yeah they were happy with it. They said that that's what they would do in the same situation, which we also used to bolster their application to have it approved. But yeah, at no point was it, which is very concerning to us because reacting to anything under an Emergency Action is in response to his actions and not at our time of choosing, not the way we want to do it. Yes, when everything else has failed, just our reaction to try and get in and save the hostages when we can.

Jon Becker: So, I just want to clarify and just kind of stay backwards. So, you guys, you described your DA plan to the military commando unit that you guys are kind of your military sister unit, for lack of a better term, or brother unit or however you want to describe it. You guys described it and they said, "We'll go run it." and they set up a mock cafe and rehearsed your plan to come back with feedback.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Yeah. I would also like to say they're very competent at their job. They're a very highly trained unit. They set up a mock cafe and trolled our proposal for Deliberate Action. I can't still to this day through suppression orders and everything speak of the exact proposal that we made which I still find quite ridiculous to be honest. Our capabilities as with a lot of our units is say explosive entry or is distraction techniques like large fuel air explosions. Our snipers have a lot of capabilities to deploy things into the cafe in situations like this. So, as I stated before, we're trained to a very high level to deal with this situation. And at no point were we actually allowed to do our job, I'd say.

Jon Becker: I think the audience of this show can infer the kinds of things that you would have done on a Deliberate Action Plan for an HRT without having to put you in Australian federal prison. you know, but, I think that, the fact that you have a second team run and literally rehearse it and test it and come back and say, "Yep, good to go. We think it'll work." and still no action is taken. Did they ever approve a DA plan?

Ben Besant: At no point during the day did they ever approve a DA plan.

Jon Becker: So the decision is made that you guys are going to react to whatever he does basically.

Ben Besant: That was the only permission we were given throughout the day was only to react upon him basically executing a hostage or a hostage being in risk of serious harm.

Jon Becker: Yeah. But with as little intel as you're able to receive, even as a hostage being at risk of harm, we're going to find out is not going to be enough or not get to you fast enough to allow the team to take the Emergency Action and get in.

Ben Besant: Yeah. And from a tactical standpoint, it's not so much of a concern to us where we're trained to do whatever we have to under whatever circumstance, but our primary mission is to try and save hostages and as many as we can and under the circumstances of an EA and Emergency Action that's significantly reduced.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, absolutely. Because you're reacting, right? Like and the other thing that I think probably bears mentioning is, we're 10/11 hours into this and you guys have been deployed and certainly doing whatever you can to rotate personnel and keep guys fresh, but like you're in this constant state of be ready for an EA, be ready for an EA. It's very difficult to keep the team sharp and fresh with 12 hours standing around just in case of an emergency, be ready. But we're not going to tell you when the emergency is going to happen.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Exactly. And there were times when we stood to the EA, so we're at full ready. Certain times when they were notified that his commands were rejected, they had us stand with the air and on top of it being in the middle of summer in Sydney, which is quite hot. In our full kit, we're all in black full bellers. All of our equipment weighs 25 kilos or so. Yep. Yeah. We're trained for it.

But on top of that, the heightened points throughout the day of adrenaline pumps and then dumps also adds to it, I'd say.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, I mean it's not a great strategy to keep the team in this heightened state of alertness. Did you guys at any point where you were rotating team members? Were you able to like you personally, were you able to get some time to just go sit down and recover and then rotate back in or are you there kind of the whole time?

Ben Besant: No, we always had a contingent, say four or so operators. We have the shield man and three or so behind them. But we did manage to get back into the truck loading bay and try and rotate a couple of operators through at a time whether to go to the toilet, or have a drink and just sort of relax for a bit. So there was that which was being supervised by our team leader.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So, it's roughly 5 o’clock when the two hostages, three hostages escape at 3:30. At 5 o'clock two more escape and at some point the negotiators have a call through one of the hostages, if I remember correctly, trying to engage the suspect.

Ben Besant: Yeah. There were a number of phone calls throughout the day, but as I said, the negotiators never actually managed to speak directly to him. That's not despite their efforts, they did try and do that. A lot of the time he was using a young guy. When I say young, I'm not sure if he was age 19 or 20 at the time, he would constantly be communicating demands to the police negotiators, but at no point did he ever speak to them.

Jon Becker: So at no point is he getting any kind of concessions either from you guys?

Ben Besant: No. No. Yes, from my understanding every one of his demands were rejected. In our team obviously throughout the day we managed to do a lot of talking because of downtime or things like that. And yeah my position and the others in my team felt like it was ramping up because hostages were escaping. All of his demands were being completely rejected.

Jon Becker: And if my notes are correct it is 8:30 p.m. he starts demanding that the Christmas lights on the street be turned off.

Ben Besant: Yes, it was around that time. It's obviously nighttime now. I will say it was a very surreal feeling in the city in the heart of Sydney. There was no one. I spent a lot of time in the city and yeah it was a very surreal feeling that the streets were bare. The only thing I remember was the pedestrian crossing over here. They make a weird buzzing sound as people are allowed to cross. I remember that going off. I remember rubbish or litter blowing through the streets. And the only thing we could see a long way away was the other police and cameras.

But yeah, he wanted the Christmas lights and street lighting turned off outside.

That was his demand. And from a tactical standpoint, too, that made sense to us.

So, we obviously wanted it off because if we ever were allowed to make entry, we're silhouetted. He can see us coming from the street lights outside. I'm not sure what time exactly he did turn the cafe lights off, but that was done. So it was now black or dark inside and our position was fully lit.

Jon Becker: But the suspect asked for those Christmas lights to be turned off.

Did those end up getting turned off? Because that's actually to your advantage.

Ben Besant: Yeah. And I know we pushed for it as well. At no point did they get turned off. I've heard rumors of what happened, but yeah, I can't say for sure. It was something to do with the sorry, it was something to do with it being too hard or the electrician couldn't get access or something like that. But yeah, from our standpoint, that was also very frustrating. And on top of everything with the terrorist, all these demands being rejected, hostages escaping, and now he was having this also rejected. I imagine it would have been infuriating for him.

Jon Becker: Yeah, he's getting nothing that he wants and now we're, 15, 16 hours, well 14 hours into the incident. So at 19:30 p.m. there's a news conference, an assistant commissioner and someone he describes as a forward commander go forward and announce to the media that they are using a Contain and Negotiate Strategy. Did you guys know that was coming? Do you even know you're using a Contain and Negotiation Strategy at that point?

Ben Besant: No. No, we did know and that is sort of standard practice for a hostage situation. But we knew we were working under that situation, but at the same time that was with any standard job that would be your deployment, contain and negotiate. That was sort of our standard practice for hostage situations. But this was also very different because of the size of the job, the bomb also. But for us to have the terrorist not speaking with negotiators is already a big red flag. To have no Deliberate Action at any point being considered or approved, that's another big red flag for us. Seeing all of his demands not being met and hostages escaping for us, that's another big red flag.

So, from our standpoint and a tactical point of view, that 's very concerning. And as you referred to then the press conference, them saying that they're working under a Contain and Negotiate system on this job. It clearly seems that they just wanted to wait this one out and see what happened.

Jon Becker: So is there any additional intel coming in? I'm assuming hostages are probably texting people or that there are phone calls or things being made from inside. Are you guys getting anything else from inside the building?

Ben Besant: I do remember briefings coming over police radio that there were some hostages managing to text outside to their families and loved ones they'

managed to hide to hide phones and I believe it was that when they went to the bathroom, when they were allowed to go to the bathroom that's when they were making these text messages to their family and loved ones. So, we were notified of that.

Jon Becker: But none of that intel is giving you anything actionable.

Ben Besant: No. From what we heard, they were very distraught and almost saying goodbye to their family, which is also concerning for us.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, what's the next significant event in the timeline?

Ben Besant: I believe for us as we've discussed our concerns I'd just like to say something here a discussion that happened within our group I think it was probably shortly after that that press conference but also one of the boys, he has no filter and jokes, he started the conversation by saying, “Beers and medals for all the family but not us”. So that's when we in our group saw the bomb. And at the start of that conversation it got very real and to the point where we all realized within ourselves that the moment we ran into that cafe that we all wholeheartedly believed that the terrorists would detonate the bomb and every one of us would be killed.

So it became a very real moment within our group. After that, we all just stood quietly. I actually text my now ex-wife wanting pictures of my little girl. I just wanted to see some pictures of her one last time. Because yeah, I along with everyone else believe the moment we made an entry that was it. She was heavily pregnant and I believed I'd never be able to meet my next child who was only months away. And I also in a roundabout way tried saying my goodbyes to her because yeah, I didn't believe I was going to ever see her again. which is very hard and I tried not letting her know that's what I was thinking but I'm sure she knew and was trying to be good at that moment. So that was a very hard moment for us. I even spoke to Paulie who's a really good mate of mine. He was on the shield man in front of me and I was showing pictures of my little girl. Showed me pictures of his young sons and he even said to me, “I love you bro” and I said to him “love you too mate”. So in a roundabout way we yeah we were sort of saying goodbye to each other because we wholeheartedly believed it was a bomb and the moment we went in yeah that's it. So, that was a very real moment that happened in the leadup to our actually being allowed to enter.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And as in your minds, the way this is going to play out is the suspect is going to do something that's going to trigger an EA. You're going to enter and he's going to detonate the bomb.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Which was sort of common practice for terrorists. Even in other incidents they would initially deploy a bomb, wait for first responders to come in and then detonate a second bomb. So yeah, we believed wholeheartedly that what he was going to do, sorry, was yeah, try and get something to bring us in. And then the moment that we all came in, that's when he would detonate the bomb.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Ben Besant: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, I guess it's about 2:00 in the morning that he is agitated and starts to move people around inside the cafe. Like starts kind of, for lack of a better term, “rearranging” his hostages.

Ben Besant: Yeah. I still remember at that point we actually had a call over police radio from management that it was their belief (I believe it was around 2 a.m) that time that it was they were of the belief that it was settling down for the night. That was the exact line they used and from our standpoint it felt the exact opposite. So you can imagine conversations amongst team members. There were a lot of expletives and swear words voiced at that point. We couldn't, we just could not believe that was what they believed. We believe this was ramping up to a conclusion that wasn't going to be good. And our frustration was definitely vented that that was their point of view.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Makes perfect sense.

Ben Besant: And then, yeah, it was only minutes later, I think it was about 2:03 a.m., literally minutes later, that we heard the first round go off, first shotgun blast go off within the cafe at that point. We all stood up to the EA, very concerned. We couldn't be sure what was going on. We didn't know what was happening, but we heard a shotgun blast going off inside the cafe-- very very concerning to us.

The first thing I believed I noticed was actually I saw a hostage who ran out from the foyer and it was running down Philip Street. So we could see a hostage running away. And then we were notified that six hostages had run to escape from the foyer. Exit, so the other door. And on them doing that, that's when he fired on the hostages. And as he's firing from the hip, I believed he just fired a little high. And there's footage of that. And just above the door is a glass panel and it's just missed like it must have been by centimeters.

Yeah, his clear intent was to shoot the hostages blowing out the glass panel just above them. They managed to escape and yeah, we were completely heightened at that point. From the triggers of the EA, he's now tried to execute hostages. He's tried to fire them and kill them and definitely put them in serious harm. So we stood ready for deployment. As you can imagine, our adrenal levels have surged, but we were trained to control that to use it. And I remember I was second in the stacks. I had Paulie right in front of me. I was physically right against him, ready to go with my M4 up. and completely ready. It just had to happen there. Had to finally happen. We were allowed to do our job and go in. I remember he was even rocking on his feet. But then minutes passed and still nothing.

Jon Becker: Because you guys are waiting for a trigger, right? You're waiting for your leadership to trigger you, which to kind of foreshadow the trigger was “tiger-tiger-tiger”.

Ben Besant: Yeah, that was our Emergency Action code word. So yeah, at that point we believed every trigger had been answered and couldn't understand why the EA Emergency Action hadn't been initiated. So we were just waiting for that code word and it never happened. and then minutes went past as you can imagine the frustration within our team and we still just weren't allowed to to deploy.

Jon Becker: So okay, he starts off with 18 hostages. He loses five two and or three and two and now he's lost six more. But this time he's taken a shot at them. So he's down to seven hostages and he's tried to kill the hostages that just just escaped. You guys are waiting for a trigger. You don't get it. At what, like 10 minutes goes by eight minutes.

Ben Besant: Yeah. There was quite a long time. And then the next thing we knew, because we weren't being fed intel, the snipers had very limited vision. We didn't know what was happening inside the cafe, which is extremely concerning to us.

The next thing he took the manager Tory Johnson and placed him on his knees within the cafe. I'd also like to say and talk about Tory, his bravery displayed on that day. Just being a cafe manager he took it upon himself to refuse to leave at any point unless every hostage was out. And at that point also when all those hostages ran out, he still refused. There was an elderly lady and her daughter who had MS who weren't physically able to run out and it was his choice to stay within the cafe. extreme bravery displayed all throughout the day. Also throughout the day learning that the terrorists didn't like him saw him as a position of power and gave him a really hard time all day which also adds to to his heroism displayed on the day.

But back to your question, yeah so from the six hostages running out obviously infuriated him as you can imagine he's then taken Tory placed him on his knees and placed a shotgun on him and the first round he actually fired high which went just above his head. Tory fell to the ground. As you can imagine, normal human response. From our position we didn't know what was going on. There was no intelligence coming back from that. But now we've had two shotgun rounds go off. We've known he's fired on the first six hostages. And now we can hear another shotgun round going off. So we completely were of the opinion as you can imagine that he's now inside executing hostages and still we were not deployed. We were not allowed to go in. Completely enraged in the situation but we're taught to obey orders and as hard as it was not to to break ranks and and want to go in and try our very best to to save these hostages which was our whole job on the day.

And also earlier from seeing them I felt I had more of a personal connection to them being observing the hostages rather than them just being another hostage. I saw them in the very distressed state that they were and my highly protective nature that I have is I was just desperate to help them. And now from outside I believed as we believed he's now executing hostages.

From here he still didn't get a reaction. I didn't know this till after. He then put Tory back on his knees again and he then pointed the shotgun to the back of his head and executed him. To this day it's still difficult for me to talk about purely because we weren't allowed to do our job, what we should have done and that was to go in and contain the threat that ultimately killed him before he managed to execute a hostage. And if my team and I had been allowed to do that, I believe he'd still be alive today.

Jon Becker: That's horrible. Does anybody outside see this? I mean they're hearing the shots, but are any of the Sierras or anybody else seeing him put Tory on his knees and put the shotgun to his head?

Ben Besant: Yeah, I definitely remember the second one coming over police radio and the call I still remember to this day was “Hostage down! White window two! Hostage down! White window two!” which yeah told us 100% he's now executed a hostage. From our standpoint as a team we're now completely focused. I was even running rehearsals of what I was going to do.

I used to race motocross as a young guy and so yeah, I knew it was inevitable we were going in. I was even running rehearsals. Our whole team stood completely ready and just waiting for the code word and then it came “Tiger-tiger-tiger”.

Jon Becker: So the Emergency Action plan is that your team, which is the alpha team, is going to go in through the primary entry door, the door on the corner.

Ben Besant: Yep.

Jon Becker: And the Bravo team, well, you've actually got what force like give me give me the layout of the team and kind of what the intended action is for the Emergency Action.

Ben Besant: Yeah. So, as we've discussed throughout this whole show, Emergency Action is far from ideal. It's reacting to a situation and through the only means you can. Our EA was for our team. I believe there's seven members to run to the front door, breach the front door with a shotgun, make entry as quick as we could, and my role was to fire on him until he was no longer a threat. But the last two operators on our stack were to use breaching shotgun rounds to fire through the window. As I said, at this point we still hadn't been notified that it was an old bank and that there was bullet resistant glass.

So going back on our deployment, on our initiation of the EA, we ran forward as fast as we could. The last two members with a breaching shotgun have tried firing at the first of four windows which was ineffective.

Then the other entry team which was through the foyer the other entry point; there would have been crossfire issues which we were well aware of. The other entry door wasn't completely opposite. It was slightly to the left, but yeah, there may well have been crossfire issues, but under an EA, under the worst case scenario, that was our only way of doing it.

Jon Becker: So, as you guys are coming through the front door and discovering that the glass is bulletproof, they're going in through the foyer and also discovering that the glass is bulletproof as they attempt to throw a flashbang through the window if my memory serves me correctly.

Ben Besant: Yeah. the actual glass panel doors that we used were not they they had been placed in after the bank. So speaking about our entry point in our stack poy on the shield, the ballistic shield which isn't a large ballistic shield but offers some sort of protection. He sprinted as fast as he could with me sprinting on his shoulder. He pulls up at the two, there's two large glass panel doors. He positions himself with a shield up to his face. And I had the muzzle of my M4 over his shoulder.

I had my light source and laser of my pec looking into the cafe. desperately scanning to try and locate him. He was wearing a white shirt and that's the white of his shirt I detected and from that moment I had my laser straight on his center body mass. So on his upper chest initially as I'm looking in there's a lot of glare coming back off the two glass panels as you can imagine. It's pitch black dark in there but yeah I had my laser and light source on him. He was initially looking back to where the two guys on our stack had attempted to make entry by firing shotgun rounds. And then he saw the light from me and yeah, I remember he had his shotgun and swiveled to me pointing the shotgun straight at us at our entry point.

I will say, it's very like the movies if Hollywood gets anything right, which I'd say that. And everything slowed down so much. At that moment once I locked eyes with him. We literally had our eyes locked from that point. I remember thinking at that moment that I was thinking that I'm going to kill you. And never did I take my eyes away from his. And then as I said, as everything slowed down so much, just waiting for the breacher to shoot out the the left of the two glass doors felt like a long time, but in reality may have only been a second or so. Once that was breached, to add to the visuals of it, it was like the glass was falling down really slowly in front of me. That's how much it slowed down.

Once the glass started to drop, my light sources in. Now I have a good vision of him. Paulie the shoe man stepped off first. I had my laser on him and as Paulie stepped I stepped and that's when I engaged the first round. The first time I fired on him. Then as my muzzle restabilized, I managed to get a second shot off and that's when from his end I saw a really large muzzle flash. He fired on us the first time at our entry point.

At this point I still felt some protection. I had Paulie sort of to my right with the shield. And once my eyes cleared from the flash, I continued to move forward to move forward to the threat to advance on the threat as we're trained to do and kept firing as soon as my muscle restabilized. Just fire again, fire again. Foreign movement as we do. I kept advancing on him because in my mind the only hope that any of the hostages had was for me to terminate the threat and ultimately kill him as fast as I possibly could to stop him detonating the bomb. So, I knew I would just spy and continue to fire until he stopped and was no longer a threat.

So I was firing as rapidly as I could knowing each round was hitting him because I saw the laser and my muscles stabilized advancing on him as a threat. Then my foot hit something. So I stopped moving forward and just continued to engage from that point.

Then again I saw a really large muzzle flash from his end and he fired on me at that moment. before then because I'm just completely fixated on him and getting him down and firing and just trying to ultimately kill him as fast as I could. I hadn't been aware that Paulie, my shield man, was no longer there. On the first shot it actually hit the other large really large blast panel door which had fallen down onto him and onto the shield which pulled him down only momentarily but enough for me to continue forward.

Jon Becker: So the round that the terrorist fired was between you and Paulie and hit the glass.

Ben Besant: Yeah. The first round actually clipped the top of Paulie's shield and hit the glass panel and that whole glass panel fell down on top of him.

On a later walk through he went through and you could clearly see where one of them was a buckshot round and one of them was an SG round. obviously a lot larger projectiles in that nine projectiles in that. So if that had hit any of us yeah they hit me in the face I'd no longer have one if what I mean.

Jon Becker: Not going well.

Ben Besant: Yeah. I believe the first shot was buckshot and just in hitting the shield and dropping the glass on him, it just pulled him down even for a moment and my job is to continue as fast as I can and advance on the threat and continue to engage. So the second time he fired on me, yeah, in that split second, I became very aware that I no longer have any cover. I'm completely alone and I was probably only seven or so meters from him and knowing what I know about shotguns, you're doing really well to miss at that range.

So, I still remember being behind my M4 and just just flinching. I was just waiting for the impact, which I thought was inevitable in that second, fully believing I was about to have my face blown off but it didn't, which is good. And as soon as my eyes cleared I started to fire on him again and as I said everything slowed down so much at this point but I do remember thinking why hasn't he gone down I know my rounds are hitting him which later found out they were. So I moved my laser pointer up on his neck and onto his head and continued to fire and fired another four or five times or so and then he started to crumble.

At the moment I couldn't tell if he's taking a knee or whatever. So, I fired on him another couple of times and then eventually he came to rest on the ground. But, as I know, I knew he was the only threat. So yeah, I had my rifle on him with my laser pointer ready and would have engaged if he even moved or what I deemed as an attempt to detonate the bomb.

Jon Becker: How many rounds did you end up firing at him?

Ben Besant: I believe it was a total of 17 rounds.

Jon Becker: And how many times he was hit?

Ben Besant: From coroner's reports of ballistics and everything. So, it's and also the--

Jon Becker: That's how much it slowed down in your brain. You're fired 17 rounds and you're waiting for effect, waiting for effect while continuing to fire.

But you fire 17 rounds, hit him 17 times and it is until you hit him in the head that he finally is stopped.

Ben Besant: Yeah, exactly. And from all the testing and everything they worked out that the whole engagement from the moment that the glass front door came down to the moment I'd stopped firing was between 3 to 4 seconds.

Jon Becker: Yeah, if you watch the video from outside the building like it's really fast.

Ben Besant: Yeah, and it was but in that moment it felt like it took a long time and a lot so much happened in that time. The glass door coming down. The first time he engaged us and hit Paulie’s shield and the glass door removed him. There were screams from behind, “Man down! Man down!”. which I knew at that moment was one of us. My primary job was to get him down as fast as I could. So I had to block that out and keep moving.

The autopsy revealed yeah that he'd been hit and hit between three to five times in the head. So yeah, it was effective shooting in that space. I believe the second round that he fired on me was the SG which I still cannot to this day fathom how exactly it missed me, but it must have been very close.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, while you guys are entering on the kind of 4-1 corner through the primary door, your Bravo team is trying to come in through the vestibule area.

Ben Besant: Yep.

Jon Becker: And what happens because they get delayed, right? Like it it doesn't--

Ben Besant: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. As happens in these situations, it doesn't go smoothly.

Ben Besant: No. And I wouldn't say ours was perfect, but yeah, they had a couple of issues on their entry team. But yeah, ultimately they made an entry. So from my standpoint, yeah, as I said, I was still completely fixated on him. My laser was on him, ready to engage at any time. We had stunnage coming in, so sound and flash grenades coming in because that was our only form of destruction we're allowed to use. At some point, I believe one bounced up off the ground and exploded right in my ear. I still have hearing loss and tinnitus from that today.

But yeah, it snapped me out of my stance and looking at him just staring at him.

Then I heard the call “With me! With me!” That was actually Paulie's voice. So yeah, I quickly turned and moved.

There was actually a partition like a glass panel and a computer. So as you make entry, I imagine you either pay for your bill there or get allocated seats. But that was what my foot had hit as I was advancing. So I had to walk there, walk around a number of tables and chairs with Paulie and then advance on the terrorist as quickly as I could with Paulie and yeah walk to him and stand over him. In that moment, it became very evident that he was no longer a threat. He was in a pool of blood and brain matter splashed across the floor.

I do recall still to this day just trying just processing even though it was only a couple of seconds that moments earlier I'd been engaged in a big gunfight with this man and clearly I'm still here and he's now dead at my feet. But also the realization that I didn't believe I'd get more than one or two steps inside the cafe before he detonated the bomb. So, I was amazed that I'd even made it this far.

That's when I looked down at the backpack bomb, what I believe was a bomb, which was still attached to his back. And even in that moment from standing right over it to me, it wholeheartedly looked like a bomb. It was very full.

Later, work came out that it was full with a big radio speaker and there were wires hanging out. So even being that close from all my training through specialists in the military, everything who had taught us on these backpack bombs, I still believed it was a bomb.

As I was standing there, Paulie moved on and I heard him screaming out, “You have been saved”. He'd walked to one of the hostages who was to say the terrorist right but so further along on the floor against one of the bench seats. So now in my mind the priorities change. He's now no longer a threat, but we need to get as many hostages out as we can. Because I along with everyone all the operators in there wholeheartedly believe that at any time this bomb may detonate.

Jon Becker: When the Bravo team gets in, do they also fire on the suspect?

Ben Besant: No. No, no, no. The suspect was already down before.

Jon Becker: So, how many are you the only shooter or are there other guys shooting?

Ben Besant: No, my team leader who came in sort of after me to my left he engaged as well. I believe it was five rounds or so.

Jon Becker: And where is the suspect standing? As you come in, is he behind a counter or a bar? Like describe what's between you and him and your TL and him.

Ben Besant: Yep. So the way the cafe is laid out down the street to my right is a large bench seat that goes for the entire wall. That's where the windows are where the hostages have been holding up the black flags and then off those bench seats there's a number of tables stacked down that side. It goes all the way to the end and there's like a little alcove at the far end. anyway, so work from my position to where the terrorist was. He was standing, say 10 m or so, directly in front of me. There were also a lot of tables and chairs stacked up throughout the place. There, as I said, there was a partition where there were also tables and chairs stacked across the front as well.

Jon Becker: When you say stacked, like was he building barricades out of them or, you know, they had just pushed them out of the way or…?

Ben Besant: Didn't look like there was too much organization in relation to it.

Yeah, as you can imagine, everything's pitch black inside, very difficult, especially at entry. Once I'd fixated on him I yeah obviously have a quick scan for other hostages. Later I was notified and I still remember the moment he had a hostage on his right to my left that was one of the elderly ladies. She was positioned and to his right which would have blocked the other entry team. So on their entry they would have turned and she would have been in the road which is obviously he's done that intentionally. And on his other side so his left my right there was another hostage Louise Hope. So he had put himself towards the back of the cafe out of vision of any of the windows but directly to my front and had a hostage on either side of him.

Jon Becker: And then where is Katrina Dawson relative to this? She's behind him.

Ben Besant: Yeah, there were two hostages in the back corner. I believe it was actually the people who run the cafe had actually stacked extra chairs and extra tables at the back in the back corner. So behind where he is and there were two female hostages lying down on the ground directly behind him. One of those was Katrina Dawson.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So the suspect goes down. At what point do you realize that she's there and that she's injured?

Ben Besant: So if I can go back quickly where I was with Paulie and that hostage that was actually Louisa Hope. I rushed to his side to help him. We'd tried getting her out as quickly as we could. She wasn't giving us any aid in doing that. She wasn't walking. Felt like we were dragging her. And I remember looking down at that point and I observed her ankle and it was only really being held on by a tendon or so and there was a large blood smear behind it from our rounds that our bosses had chosen and it was they fragment a lot on hitting something. So there were a lot of frag or fragments bouncing around inside that cafe and as a result she'd been hit from it. And on seeing that we quickly grabbed her into the fireman's carry and raced her out onto the street.

On the street there were yeah paramedics everywhere, there were even a lot of our bosses and even some bomb disposal guys. It was a scene of I'd say organized chaos. quickly handed her over to the ammos.

As I went to rush back into the cafe, I noticed on my left someone dressed all in black with the paramedics frantically working on them. In that split second or so the man down, man down came crashing back to me and I believe that it was my team leader who was in that bad way. But on further observation, I worked out that it was the cafe manager, Tory Johnson, and was obviously not in a good way at all.

Another operator bringing another hostage out sort of bumped into me. It snapped me back into the moment. I knew I had to get in and try and help as many as I could. And on re-entering the cafe, the lights were now on and it felt like a very different scene. As you can imagine when lights are off the room feels a lot larger and more open. but on top of that there was smoke filled the room from all the sound and flash grenades. There were bullet cartridges and the sound of flash grenade canisters, smashed glass everywhere. There were distraught screamy hostages and then just blood everywhere.

So, it was quite a traumatic scene as you can imagine at this point. I quickly moved back to where the terrorist was on the ground and I'd just removed the hostage Louise Hope. That was when the team leader from the other team screamed out. I won't use tactical terms, but basically “We need to search the place as fast as we can. We need to, we need everyone out. This bomb can go off at any time.”

So, I continued to scan the room from my position. and as I said earlier, sort of directly behind where the terrorist was now, down and out was the table stacked in the back corner. And as I scanned, I noticed the top of what was someone's head. I screamed to my offsider to help me. Oh, yeah. I screamed, "Hostage, help me! Help me!" and we raced forward and started removing all of these large tables out of the road. Each table that we removed revealed more of her. She was a blonde female with her hair in a ponytail in a smart business suit. She was lying face down with her head in her hands. I took a knee as quickly as I could take a knee and I could see that she wasn't in a great state. So I quickly rolled her over and gently onto her back which resulted in her head sort of being on my forearm.

And this is still difficult to talk about to this day as you can imagine but I will.

Looking into her eyes initially it was terror. She didn't know what was going on. I could see that her breathing was very labored. She was really struggling for each breath and it didn't take me long to notice that each breath was getting harder and harder for her and and less and less in strength. In that moment I realized that there was nothing I could do to help her other than attempt to comfort her.

One of the operators behind was screaming out for a medic. So, I knew paramedics were on their way and all I could do was look into her eyes and I was just willing her, not saying it, but within myself, just desperate for her to take another breath. And she took a couple more and then yeah, she stopped breathing.

Jon Becker: We will later learn that she's hit by a piece of frag from one of the rounds that probably hits the tables and chairs stacked up around her or a round that went through the suspect. Do we know kind of where the round comes from?

Ben Besant: Yeah. As we discussed, there's no real way to know for certain because obviously my team leader, he fired as well. But for me and the way she died and stopped breathing literally in my arms and then later to find out that her death was a result of police round through fragments which as you said may well have gone through him and fragmented into her. But for myself I've always blamed myself for her death. I've had many others tell me that there was never anything else different that I could have done. Obviously you can't control your feelings or the way you feel about the situation and that was her dying in my arms and then trying to face that realization is the hardest moment of my life.

Jon Becker: I can only imagine. I mean, this might be a good point for us because the situation is now resolved. This happens and you guys are immediately put under a gag order and told not to discuss it, not to do interviews about it. How does the team cope with its successful intervention and it's an EA that you have really no control over like this if this is not a completely winnable situation? It's going to be some kind of loss no matter what happens here. But how do you guys deal with the aftermath of this? What does the team do? What does the government do? Kind of give me the immediate aftermath.

Ben Besant: Yeah. So for the way they conduct investigations over here, what they do Yeah. We were later removed to a different site still completely believing there was a bomb. Sent bomb texting with robots. So, everyone even at this point still believed it was a bomb. We're removed to a safe location where we're given directions from investigating detectives and bosses to hand over our weapons, even all my ballistic vests, everything for investigation purposes. And from that very point, we're directed not to speak to any other members involved in the investigation in the actual incident. This is done, I believe so our evidence doesn't get tainted through talking to others and our versions changing. That's the idea behind it. But for us and for me being able to talk about an incident and one that was so big for us is our way of debriefing. It's our way of dealing with the situation. And not being able to do that on a personal level or a psychological level made it extra difficult. Yeah.

Jon Becker: How long is it until you guys get the coroner’s reports back and find out in fact what happened?

Ben Besant: I know it was many months later that it actually kicked off and the coroner's investigations sorry the investigations happened. I actually did a walk through with homicide detectives giving my evidence. I did that a week or so later. That's when I said I saw the shotgun rounds just above our position. So the investigations kick off and then the actual coroner starts his inquest many months later and it was a massive inquest. I believe that still today it's the largest in New South Wales history and Australia's history. There were so many people involved, so many things, so many people needed to give accounts. Still today they have closed court on as in no one outside of the coroner is allowed to know from AIO.

So our spy agency knew what they knew about him, why they were ultimately still allowed to walk the street. He and our equivalent of your DA I believe. So our department of our DPP who are public prosecutors and that was closed court as well. He was actually on bail at the time for accessory to murder his new girlfriend, had murdered his ex-wife and I believe he had over 40 or so sexual assault charges.

From my standpoint, anybody's standpoint, any member of the public, why is a man allowed on bail on the street who's involved in a murder charge involved in so many rapes? So, that was never revealed. That was a closed court and then eventually I had to give my evidence. I have a really good legal team, I'd say. My solicitor who is involved in a lot of-- my lawyer involved himself in a lot of police shootings. So he's very knowledgeable. He's actually an ex police officer himself.

And then my barrister I had looking after me was an exjag. So he worked in the military representing military personnel and now was a barrister in the private world. They looked after him really well.

Even leading up to that I had teams of ballistic everyone going over what happened and what I did within that 3 to 4 seconds of my engagement being scrutinized. by just about everyone and then also giving evidence in court scrutinizing why I had fired so many times and literally what had happened in three to four seconds. So it was difficult giving my evidence. But I know still to this day that everything I did coincided with our training and knowing what I did was to get him down ultimately to kill him as fast as I could in the hope that he wouldn't execute further hostages or detonate the bomb. So yeah, that was a difficult process hanging over me and other members and not being able to talk about the job and was also very difficult for me.

Jon Becker: Well, and the coroner’s report which we'll link we'll link to the coroners report because it is extremely well done, detailed, they brought in independent experts, they concluded the team did the right thing, right? Like the coroner's report makes it very clear that it is extremely critical of a lot of the command decisions that were made and those kinds of things. But like you read the coroner's report and it pretty much validated everything that you guys did from a tactical standpoint.

Ben Besant: Yeah. And for me and us hearing that was a good thing. As you can imagine, there's not only the trial by the coroner's inquest, but there's also trial by the media and then there's social media. And I knew I shouldn't be reading into it too much or watching too much, but it's just everywhere you go.

Australia is where you'd say a little bit more sheltered in regards to incidents like this occurring than say the US or even the UK to an extent. This was such a massive thing for Australia, a terrorism incident happening in the heart of Sydney where innocent hostages were killed. So it was a huge deal here.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And by a guy that should not have been-- I mean we conduct catch and release policing in California we just catch him and let him go but that's not the traditional approach in Australia right. This guy should have never been out on bail, he should have never had an opportunity to do this. This happens across the street from channel 7 news I mean, this is everything that's been on the news for months, years.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Yeah, it was. And obviously then the inquest is such a massive thing. So it's just constantly on all feeds on all the media. And me myself as I said, I was still blaming myself at this point for her death. So I knew I should be trying to avoid speculation within the media and then obviously there's social media which is next level. But looking back on it now, I think I probably thought because I still blame myself that I deserved a bit of punishment from reading it and that that's why I couldn't stop myself. That obviously wasn't a smart decision at that time. But even trying to avoid it, the front page of every newspaper would come on to TV stations or even at work there's newspapers there or on the TV in the mail room. So it was a big thing and it was not being able to talk to my real support network being my mates. My best mate Gus was there with me, and not being able to talk and communicate and debrief on it just made it extra-extra difficult.

Jon Becker: I can only imagine. I mean, I will tell you that I spend a lot of time talking to guys like you who have been through these events, and it is amazing to me how often the gag orders, the way that the agency handles it, the way that the government handles it in many cases inflicts more trauma.

Ben Besant: Yeah. Then moving forward I actually did manage to stay like after that incident I knew I've obviously been exposed to a lot of trauma and traumatic events throughout my career and but I'd always just as old school cops and imagine a lot of military do you just lock it away and don't process you want to stay operational want to stay effective so you just want to lock it away and tell yourself you'll deal with it later just squash it down. And with this incident, I knew that I was definitely deeply affected. My hyper vigilance was out of control.

I'd walk around with my hand on my gun the whole time. I'd even imagine walking around the large police center. I would picture other police or civilians or anyone just being shot and bleeding out in front of me. Not me shooting them, but observing them having this happen. Any blonde female I ever saw, I'd wholeheartedly believe that it was Katrina Dawson and would in the moment have had a panic attack and just hide it because I was desperate to stay on this is a job I love. This is my identity. And not only that, I wanted to be with my support network. So for months and months probably up to 6 months I was dealing with all this and just desperately trying to lock it away. After that I did manage to lock it away to a point I believed I was effectively lasting another 6 years.

I had another big job with Paulie with suicide intervention, ran into save this guy and he detonated a large petrol bomb which blew me all the way across across a garage. Paulie was in the fire. I kept trying to get back through the flame wall to get to him but couldn't. and Obviously my emotional connection to Paulie after Lindt was significant. Desperate to get to him. I couldn't. Your nature is you doesn't matter how much you want to run through fire. The moment you start burning, your body will take over. And then I saw him appear miraculously from the flames grabbing him and then he collapsed at my feet. Prior to that we were eye to eye and I saw life get out of him and he just collapsed. And yeah, in that moment, wholeheartedly believing he was dead, dragging him out. And the whole time I dragged him out, his head's just bobbing on the ground and eventually pulled him out of the garage. I couldn't face it. I left him with the ambos and walked off because I didn't want to hear the inevitable. but on return he was actually alive and the fire brigade were gently hosing his face off and just had just skin falling off his face. So now realization he's alive but having that as an issue.

My point there was that I managed to stay on for another 6 years but my cup was already full. I was already struggling to move on and deal with it. And then having a situation like that and other traumatic situations, I knew that I was really struggling to keep on top of it. And yeah, roughly 6 years after I got another knee injury. I'd had five surgeries on my left knee by this stage. And my surgeon is telling me that I need another job, one like him, he wants to sit behind a desk. My response was, "You obviously don't know me too well, mate, because that's not me. That's not something I'd ever be comfortable with." And yeah, told me I actually need a knee replacement. But the best thing to do because I was so young is to try and nurse it. I'd heard similar things to this before and in my own stubborn mind, I believed I'd just beat it, conquer it, and get back on top of it, get back to my boys, which is where I wanted to be. But it just wasn't getting better and being at home and not able to physically exercise and do what I wanted to, that's when everything started turning over a lot in my head. Having a good mate from our police rescue unit who has suffered from PTSD got to the point he pretty much begged me to go and see a psychologist.

I didn't have too much time for shrinks or psychologists at that time but eventually I did and after a few sessions she was different instantly. We had a lot of banter and jokes between each other and I knew instantly she was different and I got a bit of a rapport and then I started to talk to her and initially little things came flooding out. She told me it was going to get a lot worse before it got better and yeah, it did get a lot worse I will say but in the moment I realized I couldn't cope anymore and that PTSD was taking over my life to a point I couldn't deal with it anymore.

Jon Becker: When did it first dawn on you to write the book? Because the cafe siege is obviously the context for the book, but that's not what the book is about. When did you first think I needed to share this?

Ben Besant: Yeah. So, going from where I was just speaking about, I was still in denial to a point that I was struggling. Eventually, my psychologist recommended I go into a psych hospital, which was extremely confronting, extremely difficult for me to do, but it was something that I had to do. And yeah, as you can imagine, it's confronting being in a psych hospital, but it was the moment that I faced the reality that I do have PTSD and a lot of it was educating people on PTSD, a lot of ex-military, ex-emergency services.

One of the things they asked us to do was to write down a list of all our traumas and all the big incidents we'd been involved in. Obviously Lindt was a big part of that and a lot of others. So through my PTSD journey, writing down all of my traumas, eventually once I realized I had PTSD, I realized it was ruling my life. I went through just about every symptom. I was an alcoholic. I wouldn't sleep.

Couldn't sleep through dreams. Even flashbacks during the daytime. I locked myself away from the world. Massive depression. I had panic attacks that would come on at any time. Couldn't control them. Hence the reason I'd locked myself away. And even took a lot of medication, which is something I never wanted to do.

The moment came when I was taking my daughters to school and they were just doing their usual thing. Had a bit of a fight and then I just snapped it and screamed till I was red in the face. And seeing how upset they were, I told myself in that exact moment that I need to do this not only for me but my girls and my family. I need to get better. So that's when I dropped all my inhibitions. I trusted the experts. I found myself doing things I never imagined in my life. By doing yoga and breathing exercises and meditation, I even had a few sessions where they put magnets stimulation on your brain because when you have PTSD your fight or flight response is constantly activated. So that's the whole idea is to stimulate brain blood flow back to the parts of your brain because not only memory recall but even everyday tasks you really struggle with.

So the point I'm making is that once I realized I had PTSD, I knew I wasn't going to let it define me. It was not my new identity. It was not who I was. And I would fight with everything that I had to beat it and apply my tactical knowledge and what I'd learned. And that is to never never back away from it, but to advance on the threat. My new threat was PTSD and that I was to advance on it and use every resource that I could and trust the experts, try everything I could to beat it and eventually did get on top of it.

During all of that, as I said, I wrote down a lot of traumas and things that had happened to me as part of my exposure therapy and everything. And my wife at the time, (I didn't manage to save my marriage. which is common for a lot of PTSD sufferers) but she told me that I should write a book. Definitely not something I'd ever considered that I would ever do, but she knew someone who had written a number of books and yeah I had a couple of meetings with him and the decision was made for me to write a book and he'd edit it and work together to do that.

My two main motives I would say for writing the book was, the version of the TOU, my version and also all the operators that version was never told publicly.

The version of the hostages, the scrutiny of all the management was well documented. But from the frontline perspective and us on the street and every operator who bravely made entry into that cafe, well, every one of us is as brave as each other. They all believed, as I did, the moment we made an entry that we're going to die. That was a big motivation behind me writing it, that that story needed to be told. But also on top of that and my constant desire to help people is to share my story and my journey with PTSD. My refusal to let it define me to beat me. I'm stubborn. I don't let anything defeat me. I applied my tactical way of thinking to that. And that is to drop all my inhibitions and do whatever I can to fight it. And now to this day, I do feel a lot better and I've conquered it to a point that I want to share my story and get that out there and hopefully help as many as I can.

Jon Becker: No, it's a fantastic book. And I mean I guess the last thing I'd like to just take up with you is the journey to actually release the book turned into one more battle about gag orders and the book is initially released under the name “Officer A” because you're not allowed to use your own name. Tell me the story of how the gag order ultimately gets lifted because I think it's an interesting perspective on Australian media.

Ben Besant: Yeah. To this day I'm very disappointed and frustrated by the stance of the coroner's court and the police force. Writing the book pretty much took me a good two. I like to be if it's got my if it's my thing, my story, I want to do it perfectly. But say after a year or so reached out to the Dawson family and provided them with a draft version if there was anything that they wanted removed. Of course, I would and they did request a few things which obviously instantly I removed. The same with the Johnson family. Then I reached out to the police force.

I would still be in the police force if I could, if I didn't have PTSD and I don't have any animosity there and just wanted to do the right thing and my intentions were always good. I kept prompting them for a response and asked them just as I was trying to do was the the right thing and if they wanted anything removed I would have done so.

After 6 months or so they've sent me some threatening emails through their legal team saying that if I am to publish in this current version that I'd potentially be liable to potential jail time and huge fines. My response to that was “I'm trying to do the right thing here”. Can you please just tell me what you want taken out of it?

There was never anything given back. Just still a constant threat. They did defer me to the coroner's court, the state coroner. I requested them if there was a ridiculous amount of suppression orders made at the time of the inquest, hundreds and hundreds of them. I requested any relevant ones. I gave them a copy of the book and asked if there's anything they'd like removed. Still trying to do the right thing. They stuffed me around for another couple of months before they refused to give me anything. They said a lot of them are available publicly.

So I've done the right thing. I tried removing whatever I could.

In relation to identity at the time of the actual incident, it was my legal team which is standard practice to do that from possible reprisals from other terrorists upon myself or my family. Obviously wanting that lifted shouldn't have been a big deal but apparently it was. So after all of this and then the buildup to the release of my book, it was two weeks out and the threats from the police legal team and even the head solicitor lawyer in the state were sending me likeminded threatening emails. I actually had the Daily Telegraph, which is our largest paper over here, side with me and they released a big article I believe the day before the launch which helped me out a lot and brought public awareness to the incident. I still took a big chance in releasing the book but suppressing as much as I believed they wanted and my name.

So going forward from the actual launch, I hadn't been locked up which is a good thing and we did have a New Zealand publisher. I'm not sure if that worked legally to our advantage. But after that yeah we're constantly asking for my name to be lifted and that didn't happen. I actually got my legal team from the time of the inquest who was actually the legal team who put in for my initial suppression requesting to the coroner's court to have my name revealed to me but they blatantly refused saying they need to open a whole other coroner's investigation in relation to it which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they're just trying to get me to go away, suppress me.

Jon Becker: So from their perspective, you were just never going to be able to release your name.

Ben Besant: Yeah, they had no intention of ever letting me release my name. I still can't understand the standpoint if that's what I want. And it came back 10 years after the incident. Like this happened 10 years ago. How am I not allowed to talk about it and put my name to my story? which is so important to me And even having my identity and my name and my face, being able to be out there speaking with a lot of other PTSD groups or survivors, like I know my story can help people, which is what I wanted. and my sole motivation behind it and still, yeah, they wouldn't.

Channel 7, which was actually the large television station opposite the Lindt Cafe the whole day, one of the reporters there was actually there the whole day and watched the whole incident. He's pretty big in the reporter world and he's made contact with me. I had sort of been in contact over the years with him and he made the proposal that Channel 7 would take up the legal fight if I was willing and was willing to do a program for them that they'd take up legal fight to have my name revealed. And I think they were also very surprised at the blowback from the police force and the coroner in relation to it. They couldn't understand it.

I did warn them that it was going to be very difficult. They've told me they spent above and beyond $120,000 in legal fees to get it done. They even had to take it to the Supreme Court so I know it's still--

Jon Becker: Just so you can put your name on a book you wrote.

Ben Besant: Put my name. That's it. That's all it is. And I still cannot understand the motivation, like possibly it's that they don't want this incident talked about because there were as detailed as many questionable decisions I would say on the day. The way I wrote the book I didn't need to say that. They'd already been dragged over the coals for decisions they've made.

Jon Becker: The book is no more critical of them than the coroner report is. The coroner's report is scathing right. It's not that the coroner's report is not like, "Hey, everything went well." The coroner's report is that you should have done this. There should have been professional negotiators. They should have been in contact. We'll link to the coroner's report in the show notes. But like it is from a command and control standpoint, reading the coroner's report is like a who's who of things that shouldn't have happened. The only thing that the coroner seemed to believe was done well was the EA. It seemed that they were relatively complimentary of the team's bravery and the team's response. I don't know what the government was fearing with the book because the coroner’s report eviscerated the government response. So, actually the book is not. I don't think you were anywhere near as harsh as the coroner was.

Ben Besant: No. I actually made a point of doing that. Like they didn't need further criticism. They were out there in the public view. Everything they had done, every mistake they had made had already been talked about. And I didn't feel that I needed to do that. Because it everyone knew the decisions they made weren't exactly the correct ones. And so yeah, from my standpoint, the way I wrote the book was never vindictive towards them at all. And that's why I just still just could not understand why they fought so hard for the book never to be released. And then also it appeared fighting so hard for me not to even be allowed to put my name to the book and get my name out there.

The only thing I can speculate is that they don't want this incident back in the public forum. They don't want it spoken about because of the decisions made on that day. But yeah, I took the high road. I know within myself I've done everything reasonable that I could do and yeah, still confused as to why they did what they did.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean the perfect example is when we first started talking about doing this, we were going to not even identify you, right? I mean, this was going to be anonymous or Officer A. It was not going to be Ben. It wasn't until ABC succeeded. I think it's definitely worth people watching the special that was done, it's very clear that the reporter had an emotional tie to this, having watched it play out in real time they subsequently did with you is actually fantastic. Like it really kind of documents not only the incident, but your journey back to kind of mental health and happiness and all those. So, we will also link to that. If people want to learn more about, you know, what you're doing now to get the book, what is the best way for them to find you and to find what you're doing?

Ben Besant: Yeah, obviously I have social media, Facebook and Instagram, which I'm on quite a bit. That's a “Tiger Tiger Tiger Book”. and the best way to purchase the book would be online through TigerTigerTigerBook.com . We ship to the States and all around the world. I would say my intention as I've covered was to get my message out there and to help sufferers of PTSD. And honestly the response so far has been overwhelmingly overwhelmingly positive. And I'm now actually this year I'm ramping up and speaking with as many groups as I can, which I can now because I have my identity back. So yeah, through the book and the feedback of my journey, everything I went through and my steps and ways of attacking and confronting the threat that is PTSD and not letting it own me and define me. That message has resonated very strongly within military and emergency services personnel but but not only that even civilians and the people who suffer from PTSD. It's such a massive problem it doesn't only affect the the person the sufferer but all of their immediate family their wife their children or husbands or even brothers and yeah it affects such a large number of people, and that's why I see it as as such an important thing for me to do.

Jon Becker: Love it, man. You're doing good work, Ben. And I appreciate it and I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me and walk through what was certainly the most traumatic day of your life.

Ben Besant: Thanks very much. I appreciate you having me on.