LIVE FEED: Australian cafe held up by someone with Islamic flag

[Aractus]

1 - I read that it is not easy to get hold of an Islamic State flag. I guess the authorities are rightly watching/banning such items.

That's plausible, in any case he may not have one.

2 - I also read the police asked the media not to report the demands of the perp, for operational reasons.

That's true, but they did publish the demands throughout the course of the day even though they largely ignored referencing them specifically later on.

3 - I heard the perp was furious that some hostages got away. Maybe he's not in total control.

Look, again plausible. I do not know the content of most of the other social media communication that's been coming out, because it keeps getting deleted. I did just now see a video of a hostage relaying his three demands:
1. he wants an IS flag in exchange for one hostage
2. he wants the media to report that this is an IS attack in exchange for two hostages
3. he wants Tony Abbott to call him directly in exchange for five hostages
and
4. he's claiming to have bombs around the city (although nobody seems to believe this).

This seems to have been his consistent claims for the past 12 hours.

Here is another tweet with the same message:



Which like the other ones and the videos posted to Youtube have been deleted presumably by Twitter and Google (e.g. /watch?v=BZwq5OMhT98 is the video I saw before it was taken down). You can see them at https://twitter.com/hashtag/sydneysiege within a minute or two of them popping up and then not again.

His location (in clear view of Channel 7 television offices) gels with his wish that this be known as an attack by Islamic State.

And down the road from the courts and NSW parliament.

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Also, I'm really not impressed at all by the response by Islamic community leaders. One of them said "we don't apologise for this because this is not what we believe". That just is not good enough. A few months ago on QandA one young Muslim asked the PM, the Hon. Tony Abbott why they are targeted by police. He responded by saying that it is in fact terrorist organisations that are targeting the vulnerable in their community and that they as a community need to do more to prevent this and protect their community. It was one of the very best examples of him answering a question very strongly and in such a clear and agreeable way.

It's simple and I agree with it, they know their community is targeted by ISIL and organisations like them to find terrorist recruits, and they need to do more as a community to put a stop to it and protect the members of their family and community.