Aussie police end alleged bomb standoff

SYDNEY – A man who marched into a Sydney law office with his daughter and said he had a bomb in his backpack was taken into custody Tuesday after a tense, 12-hour standoff with police.

The man’s 12-year-old daughter was released and reunited with her family, New South Wales police said. She was distressed, but otherwise unharmed, police said.

Police did not immediately say whether explosives had been found in the man’s backpack.

“Towards the latter part of the time we’ve been here, those negotiations have started to break down and then deteriorate to a stage where police have taken action to break into the premises and take a 52-year-old man into custody,” Police Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford said. “He’s currently assisting police with their ongoing inquires.”

Police have not released the man’s name.

The standoff came a month after an extortionist broke into a Sydney home and fastened a fake bomb around the neck of a millionaire’s teenage daughter. A suspect in that case was arrested in the United States.

The man involved in Tuesday’s standoff issued several demands, but police declined to reveal details and said they had not yet established his motive. They evacuated the building, kept onlookers 100 yards away and were seen entering with at least one automatic weapon.

Australian broadcasters showed footage of him looking from a second-floor window shirtless and wearing the kind of wig worn by judges and lawyers in Australian courts. At one point he spat on the wig.

He later swung a glass bottle like a hammer to smash a plate-sized hole in the office window. He yelled through the hole and threw the bottle, then a telephone handset, which was left dangling by its cord.

He extended his hand from the broken window to make a peace sign then threw out a note. Clifford said the note was to police, but declined to comment on its contents.

Clifford declined to comment on media reports that the man was arrested Monday at a government building after he was involved in an incident at the state parliament in Sydney. Ten Network television news reported that the man had been charged in 1987 in connection with a protest over an Aboriginal man’s death in custody.

Jeremy Buckingham, lawmaker from the minor Greens opposition party, said he had briefly met the man Monday at state parliament.

“He spoke to me about five minutes about legal issues,” Buckingham told parliament on Tuesday.

“He said he had information he wanted to show the attorney-general. He did not clearly articulate his issues,” Buckingham added.

Betty Hor said she was working at the reception desk at the lawyers’ offices when the man approached Tuesday morning and asked to see someone whom Hor had never heard of. The man went upstairs briefly then returned to the reception desk and repeated his request. She repeated that she had never heard of the man he was looking for.

Hor, who spoke to reporters after evacuating the building, said the man threw a book on her desk and told her to call the unknown man and the state attorney-general’s department and “tell them I’ve got a bomb in my backpack.”

Hor called police as the man walked upstairs to a lawyer’s office with the girl, 카지노사이트 who called him “Dad.”

Hor said he seemed frustrated and angry. She said she had never seen him before.

Five ambulances and two fire trucks were standing by at the scene, while police directed traffic away from the area as the standoff extended through the evening rush hour.

Bitter family court cases have triggered some high-profile crimes recently in Australia, including the murder of a 4-year-old girl whose father threw her more than 260 feet from a bridge in the southern city of Melbourne in 2009.

The father, Arthur Freeman, 37, was sentenced in April to life in prison after a jury rejected his plea of innocence due to mental illness.

A month ago, an extortionist broke into a Sydney home and fastened a fake bomb around the neck of a millionaire’s teenage daughter. She spent 10 terrifying hours with the device strapped to her before police determined it was harmless and freed her.

Australian Paul Douglas Peters, 53, is in jail in Louisville, Kentucky, awaiting extradition next month on charges in Australia that include kidnapping and breaking and entering.