It was the scene of the most public, horrendous crime Sydney has witnessed, but on Friday politicians and officials gathered at the Lindt Cafe in the city’s busy financial district to mark its reopening.
It has been just over three months since gunman Man Haron Monis held 18 people hostage inside the cafe in Martin Place for 16 hours. On Dec. 15, as the city was filling up with morning Christmas shoppers, Monis ordered a cup of tea and a piece of cake inside the cafe, before locking the entire place down.
He forced hostages to drape Islamic flags from the windows, used women as human shields and threatened to blow the entire place up. Two hostages didn’t make it out alive — cafe manager Tori Johnson was shot in the head by the gunman while Katrina Dawson died from police bullet ricochet as they stormed the building in the early hours of Dec. 16. — and the gunman was shot dead by police.
On Saturday, Lindt will be open to the public and huge crowds are expected to fill the area. Easter eggs have been placed in the windows and chocolate was being prepared, as New South Wales Premier Mike Baird, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Lindt Australia CEO Steve Loane declared the cafe open. One of the hostages, staff member Joel Herat, is again working behind the counter.
Two plaques have been unveiled just inside the entrance to the store in memory of the two victims. It was in this space Johnson and Dawson took their last breaths, after hours of terror at the hands of Monis, a crazed lone-wolf gunman with a political agenda.
Following the attack, a field of flowers covered Martin Place as Australia came together in a show of solidarity. The country was rocked by the disbelief that an attack of this level could happen in their city and vowed to not play the victim.
-mashable