EXCLUSIVE: Inside the Sydney siege

EXCLUSIVE: Survivors of the Martin Place siege have spoken for the first time about their ordeal, revealing a series of potentially-deadly escape attempts and the grim details of how two of their fellow hostages never made it out alive.

In a series of paid interviews recorded by the Seven Network over the last few weeks, six of the survivors have given extraordinary details about what went on behind the windows of the Lindt Cafe on December 15.

They describe how gunman Man Monis threatened to kill them repeatedly during the 17-hour ordeal and became increasingly agitated when his demands to speak to Prime Minister Tony Abbott weren't met.

The oldest and youngest hostages - 20-year-old cafe worker Jieun Bae and 82-year-old customer John O'Brien - also revealed how they staged daring escapes which could have got them or the other hostages killed.

The interviews are set to air in a news special next weekend.

In it, the survivors tell how it was only chance that brought them together in a cafe in Sydney's Martin Place, a decision which delivered them to a crazed gunman who they say never intended to get out alive and didn't care if they died.

Hostage Marcia Mikhael during her interview with Seven News.

Marcia Mikhael said it was only by chance that she ended up in the Lindt cafe that morning.

The bodybuilder and Westpac project manager splits her time between two offices - one at Martin Place and at Kent Street, at the other end of town.

She was deciding which one to go to when a colleague sent her a text, asking: are you coming to Martin Place do you want to do coffee?."

"That’s when I decided yeah I’m going to go to Martin Place I’m not going to Kent," she said.

“So I texted back and said yes I’m coming to Martin Place but I don’t want to have coffee at Lindt I’m trying to be good today ... no chocolate, no cakes we go somewhere else.

“He texted back saying yeah no worries, you know we don’t have to go to Lindt...”

But the colleague, Pushpendu Ghosh, and another friend had decided to trick her into going to Lindt to tempt the fitness fanatic with chocolates.

“It was 'let’s tease her and test her will', how much can she resist chocolate because she loves chocolate?" Mr Ghosh recalled.

Also joining them was Viswakanth Ankrireddi, an IT expert at Westpac.

The man who would become the siege's oldest hostage, 82-year-old John O'Brien, had just finished his annual eye check-up in nearby Macqaurie Street and had decided to go to Lindt for a coffee.

As he entered, Ms Mikhael was already being confronted with the chocolate bought by her joking colleagues.

Gunman Man Haron Monis. Picture: AAP

Six dark chocolate macaroons lined up in a row.

"We never got to eat them, never got to eat them," she said.

Next to their table, she said cafe manager Tori Johnson was doing some paperwork.

With him, was an "unusual" man who would, within moments, turn terrifying.

"He looked a bit unusual with his backpack on and he didn’t have the bandana on then. ... and they were just calmly talking there it seemed, and I didn’t take any notice of it," Ms Mikhael said.

"I thought it was like a meeting. Nothing special.”

Mr O'Brien was just finishing his coffee and raisin toast and was just about to leave when the front door was locked and "all hell broke loose".

Jieun Bae said her manager, Mr Johnson, had asked for the door to be locked. It would later be revealed that it was Monis, the "unusual" man with the backpack, who had ordered him to do it.

One customer tried to leave and couldn't get through the locked doors.

"I thought it was quite rude," Ms Mikhael said.

"So I looked at her and I said 'this is the manager, I know, ask him to open the door for you, he’ll let you out'.

"And that’s when everything started. That’s when Man Monis gets up and he shows the gun.

"He takes the gun out of the bag and he says 'sit down, everyone... if you sit down and don’t move you’ll be okay, you’ll be safe'

"(He said) 'there’s a big police presence outside, I’m trying to keep you safe'.

"He made it sound like he was trying to keep us in there for our own good and safety."

Ms Bae said she thought the doors had been locked because something was happening outside.

But then Monis told them he had two bombs in the cafe.

He ordered them to move against the wall.

Ms Mikhael was then told to stand by the window and hold up a black flag so it could be seen from outside.

Monis told his hostages - 10 men and eight women - that if the police came close to the cafe, he would shoot one of them.

Ms Chen said she started to panic and Mr O'Brien put his hand on her back and tried to reassure here that they would be okay.

"He (Monis) was ranting and raving about Tony Abbott," Mr O'Brien said.

"... what a cheat and a liar and a terrible man he is, and he won’t pull the Australian troops out of Afghanistan.

"That was his main rant at that time; he was raving on about that. And nobody would come to the phone and talk to him, and that made him more angry.

"He said that because Tony Abbott wouldn’t come to the phone, he said Tony Abbott will have all your blood on his hands when I kill you all one by one."

Hostages Elly Chen (left) and Jieun Bae (right) revisit the Lindt cafe. Pictured here with Mark Ferguson in front of the door through which they escaped.

Ms Mikhael said they feared Monis would make good on his word.

“We were terrified that he was eventually going to start shooting us, we didn’t know what he was capable of because no-one knew who he was...whether he was just a lunatic who decided to do this on his own or whether he was with someone else, or whether he was a terrorist, we didn’t know, we just didn’t know who he was.

"At first I was hysterically crying - like frantic crying - standing there with my arms up in the air, because at the beginning there was a lot of commotion.

"There was people trying to either get in and out of the building, cops yelling at them to get out of the way. And then the street became deserted.

"And then all of a sudden there was a police officer.

"I was the only one who could see him because he was standing right against a wall and the door was there "Because of where I was standing, Man Monis couldn’t see that I had my eyes open, so I was actually looking out and I started to communicate with this police officer.

"That was right at the beginning, maybe the first hour.

"The police officer asked me then how many of gunmen in the room. "Because I had my arms up in the air, all I did was just point, you know, number one, to him.

"So he goes, okay, he goes 'one?' And I said, 'yes'. And then he goes, where is he now? And once again, I just kind of pointed as to where he was, because he was standing just behind the wall where I was. And then he disappeared.

"There was no-one there anymore.

"It was just quiet and it was very scary.

"I was thinking where’s everyone? Why are they? Why aren’t they rescuing us? Where are they? It was just deserted. There was no-one outside, no-one. It was quite scary."

Across Martin Place, the Channel Seven newsroom could be seen through glass walls. It had been evacuated but key members of the police tactical response unit were using it as a base to observe what was happening through the cafe windows and possibly take out Monis.

Monis kept asking his hostages: "Is there anyone in Channel Seven? Can you see anyone?"

"And I’m looking inside Channel Seven and I could see police officers in there walking around and I’m just looking at them going why aren’t you helping us?," Ms Mikhael said.

"Why don’t you come and get us out of here?

"And then he would ask, 'can you see anyone?' and I would go 'no, the building has been evacuated, there’s no one in there. There’s no one in there'.

"And I could see about five, six police officers just walking around, walking around and I’m like 'why aren’t you helping us?'

"I know they couldn’t. I know that. I know they had a plan but not knowing, the unknown was hard. It was hard."

Sydney siege victims barrister Katrina Dawson and cafe manager Tori Johnson. Pic from Twitter

Monis had made everyone put their phones on the table but Ms Mikhael managed to get hers back and told Monis she needed to go to the bathroom.

Inside, she managed to text her husband, George, and her sister.

At the time, he was frantically driving towards Martin Place.

"As I crossed Anzac Bridge she sent me the first message," he said.

"I was driving. I read it. My heart just dropped. You know, my fear just came.

"It said: 'At Lindt, hostage'.

"And I know she can't write much.

"I replied while I was driving. I said, 'I love you'."

At 2.30pm, he sent another message: "Be strong".

Hostage John O'Brien during his interview with Seven News.

Five hours later, she texted him again: "I'm scared he's going to kill us".

Mr O'Brien also managed to call his wife, telling her he was being held hostage.

"I thought, well, is this the last day on planet Earth?

"Because this fellow is serious about killing us one by one, and the tension was building in my head then.

"It would’ve been nice to just have said, well, I love you very much and I don’t know what’s going to happen here. But he jumped at me and stood up and I thought he was going to pick the shotgun up when I was talking on it. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know what he was going to do.

"He got up quite angry and he said, 'get off that phone straight away', which I did."

Monis began making small talk with the hostages, asking them about their families and whether they had any children.

But he grew increasingly frustrated when none of his demands were being met and none of his messages were being broadcast by the media.

He instructed Ms Mikhael to ring media organisations directly.

In a recording of one of those calls, a distraught Ms Mikhael pleads: “We don’t want to die. There are a lot of people in here and we have families. We want to go home and we want to go home safe.”

While he forced hostages to hold up a black Shahada flag, depicting the Muslim declaration of faith, he demanded that police supply him with the flag used by the Islamic State.

"He kept saying that if his demands were met, he would release a hostage for a flag," Ms Mikhael said.

"He would release five hostages for the opportunity to talk to Prime Minister Tony Abbott via a live broadcast.

"He would release two other hostages if there was a live broadcast saying that this was an attack on Australia by the Islamic State.

"But we were more than eight people in there, so I actually asked him I said 'what happens to the rest, what if all your demands are met? Eight hostages are out, what about the rest of us?'

"He goes 'don’t worry. I’ll make all the demands and will release the other hostages as well' and then I asked him 'what about you, how do you think you’re going to get out of here? Do you think you’re going to get out of here alive?'

"He looks at me and he goes 'don’t worry I have a plan for myself'.

"So I knew he didn’t want to get out of there alive and because of that, I was very afraid of how it was going to end."
She said she believed it didn't matter to him whether he killed them or not because he believed he was also going to die.

In the early afternoon, after they group had been held for several hours, Ms Mikhael feigned chest pains in a bid to trick Monis into allowing a doctor in. She said she figured it could provide an opening for police. Monis refused.

Then 82-year-old Mr O'Brien started began to think that if several of them teamed up, they could jointly overpower Monis.

"I thought about if I could’ve organised two or three of the other men to you know jump him or get something to hit him over the head," he said.

"But I couldn’t, we couldn’t organise anything because we were separated. He had everyone in certain spots."

But a second chance came when Mr O'Brien asked to go to the toilet, and was escorted there by Lindt worker, Fiona Ma. On the way, he found a possible opening to escape.

"She was the girl who was assigned to take everyone to the toilet, and you were supposed to keep your eyes closed as you walked over and she had you by the arm," Mr O'Brien said.

But he kept his eyes open and spotted a green button - marked "press to exit" - by a fire escape door.

When he returned from the toilet, he whispered to Ms Chan: "does the green button on the door work?"

She told him: "I don't know. I've only been here a week".

By then, the pressure had got to several of the hostages.

Ms Chan collapsed on the ground in a panic attack.

Bid for freedom. Picture: AP Photo

While she lay there in front of him, Monis had his gun to her back.

"At this point in time there was quite a lot of shouting because the other hostages, they were getting angry and irritated as well," she said.

"And so that agitated him, and I felt really scared, because if I did anything wrong I’d be the first one gone."

By 3pm, Mr O'Brien decided to take a chance with the green button.

But to get there, he would have to crawl across the floor under several tables and push himself through a small gap between a Lindt sign and the wall near the exit door.

"I was waiting for the right moment," he said.

"He was getting lower and lower into the corner of the far end of the shop and I thought,' well, it’s worth the risk to be either shot there or shot on the way out; I think it’s a better risk to go for it'.

Mr O'Brien signalled silently to another hostage, lawyer Stefan Balloufitis, who was standing near him. The pair quietly began making their way to the exit door.

He thought: "This is going to be the biggest roll of the dice of my life."

"They were the worst ten seconds of my life, because I thought if the green button doesn’t open then he’ll probably come up and shoot us in the back," he recalled.

"And they were, they were the worst ten seconds, waiting for that green button to open."

When the door opened and Mr O'Brien ran out into Martin Place, he said it was "the most wonderful moment".

He immediately began giving police information about Monis and the location of the hostages.

A short time later, the third hostage to escape, Paolo Vassoulis, fled out into the street.

Ms Mikhael said the escapes made Monis furious.

"He started issuing threats that he’s now going to kill someone just to set an example and that one of us is going to pay for their mistake," she said.

"I think he said 'it’s a big mistake, now someone’s going to pay for it'.

"All of us then tried to calm him down, trying to reason with him, trying to explain to him that we are still here. We did not abandon him, we’re still listening to him and we are still working with him and that he should spare our lives."

The remaining hostages then made a pact that none of them would try to escape.

Ms Chen, who was still curled up at Monis' feet, said she was terrified that the increasingly angry Monis, with his gun to her back, would shoot her. She slowly slid away from him behind a pillar, where Ms Bae had also found refuge.

Despite the fact they both worked at the cafe, that day was the first time they'd met.

Ms Chen was only three shifts into the new job and Ms Bae had just come back from a month off work.

They decided to plan an escape so quiet that Monis wouldn't even know they were gone.

They were near a door leading to Martin Place which was locked by a latch.

Slowly pulling on it over the course of several minutes so it didn't make a sound, they managed to rush out. Monis didn't see them do it and, according to Ms Mikhael, didn't notice they were gone.

In total, seven hostages managed to escape over the course of the siege.

Two never made it out alive.

In the Seven special to air next weekend, Ms Mikhael described the horrifying moment Monis shot cafe manager, Tori Johnson, and Katrina Dawson was accidentally killed by a bullet fired by the police team trying to save her.

"Katrina and I look at each other, and you could see the fear on her face and I must have had the same fear on my face as well, because I was terrified," Ms Mikhael recalled.

The sea of flowers in Martin Place. Picture: AP Photo

Moments after Mr Johnson was forced to kneel on the ground and shot in the back of the head, police burst into the cafe.

"And I took one last look at Katrina and she looked at me, and then she puts her hands on her face and she puts her face down like to protect her face, and I kind of go into a foetal position, you know, and my legs get hit," Ms Mikhael said.

"Both legs were in agony. I could tell that I was hit by something. I did let a little scream out, but then I kind of held myself back thinking, be quiet, he’s going to hear you, you have to be quiet, he’ll hear you.

"And I knew that I was on the line of fire where I was lying down because I got shot.

"At the beginning I figured I’m going to get shot more if I don’t move, so I kind of shuffled around a bit to the corner. And I kind of went into that foetal position, and I’m praying and I’m just thinking 'please God, please God, please God, I need to get out of here alive'. And I just put my hands in my ears.

"It was just so loud, so many shots, so many."

At the inquest into the siege, which opened last week, the bangs were revealed to be from 11 SF9s, which were used as a distraction. Also known as "flashbangs" they create the sound of shots and flashes of light. The effect, to anyone nearby, is of a hail of bullets.

It would have sounded like more than 100 gunshots but in total, 22 shots were fired by the officers and two shots by Monis.

Monis' shots missed the police but 13 of their bullets hit him - two in the head and 11 in the body.

He died instantly.

Six police bullets, or fragments of bullets, also hit Katrina Dawson, who was lying in the foetal position on the cafe floor. One struck a major blood vessel. She lost consciousness and died a short time later.

Ms Mikhael was lying next to Ms Dawson at the time, facing her. She said she saw Ms Dawson's face. Katrina wasn't moving.

Ms Bae, who became the terrified face of the siege when she ran into a police officers' arms after escaping the Lindt cafe, said Monis "looked like danger".

When asked if she could still picture his face, Ms Mikhael said the question should be "whether I can ever not see his face".

"And the answer is no, I can't ever stop seeing his face," she said.

Seven News will air a special edition, Inside the Siege: The Untold Story, Sunday 8 February at 6pm.