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The Sydney siege might have "turned ugly" but police handled the situation well, an Illawarra-based hostage negotiator says.
The director of Terrorism Studies at the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention at the University of Wollongong, Professor Adam Dolnik, said negotiators acted by the book as the situation around the Lindt Chocolat Cafe escalated in the early hours of Tuesday.
"My guess is the tactical team ... saw a situation [where] hostages were getting harmed and decided to step in to protect those hostages, which is absolutely the right call," Prof Dolnik said.
"It appears to be a spontaneous sequence of events ... [it] doesn't seem to be a tactical assault that was pre-planned. Unfortunately, things turned ugly because of the gunman's actions."
Prof Dolnik said flash bangs provided enough cover for officers to eliminate the hostage-taker and, had the gunman not acted the way he did, hopes for a resolution were very high.
"Overall, I think the negotiation approach was handled very well," he said.
"The negotiations were progressing well and it was just very unfortunate the events took an ugly turn."
Prof Dolnik said the NSW Police negotiation team was one of the best-prepared in the world.
"They were definitely not caught off guard."
Prof Dolnik reiterated comments made to the Mercury on Monday that the siege wasn't a "terrorist-inspired event".
"You have a deeply troubled individual in a personal crisis who chooses the ISIS bandwagon as a way to be famous and be visible," he said.