A gunman who killed a man and took a woman hostage before dying in a police shootout had been acquitted of plotting a terror attack at a Sydney army base years earlier, police said Tuesday. The gunman, Yacqub Khayre, 29, was one of two men acquitted by a jury in 2010 of plotting a suicide attack in Sydney. The woman, a 36-year-old Columbian national, was bound during her ordeal and had been “very significantly traumatized,” Patton said. Police were not advised that Khayre had removed or disabled the bracelet until the siege started, Patton said. Police said the Melbourne siege was the fifth terrorist-linked incident in Australia since the threat level was lifted in September 2014.

Source: National Post June 06, 2017 16:12 UTC