The Sydney Siege is exactly the kind of situation New Zealand hopes to avoid. Prime Minister John Key has revealed there are “one or two” people in the country who are capable of carrying a similar attack.

On Monday, a gunman stormed inside the Lindt Chocolate Café in Sydney, taking hostages of the staff and customers inside. The situation lasted for more than 16 hours, ending in the early hours of Tuesday and killing two people and the hostage-taker, who was identified as Man Haron Monis, a self-styled sheik with a lengthy rap sheet.

The attack in relatively peaceful Australia shocked the world. Such type of terrorism is highly unusual in the country. In New Zealand, Mr Key revealed that intelligence agencies are monitoring individuals with “not identical, but similar characteristics” to Monis.

“If you think about the sort of characteristics of the person that could be attracted to these kinds of actions they need to be often….disenfranchised, sometimes mentally unwell, perceptible to the sorts of messages that ISIS are pumping out by their social media and outreach campaign and believers of the extreme version of Islam,” the PM said. “When all those characteristics congregate together you have a toxic combination and that’s what you see both in Canada and Australia.”

He added that there’s a “very small group” of people in New Zealand that fit the category. “We do our best to monitor them but as you can see these people in Australia and Canada were all known to the authorities, so it shows you how high the threshold is before someone can actually be detained – and that’s the challenge between freedom and liberty and keeping New Zealanders safe.”

Earlier this month, the NZ Parliament passed new terror legislation that aims to stop home-grown terrorism. The Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill allows warrantless surveillance for 24 hours of people suspected of terrorist activities. It also includes the cancellation of passports for up the three years, stopping people from leaving the country to join the ISIS in Iraq or from carrying out terrorism in New Zealand.

The Sydney Siege was initially thought to be the work of ISIS, but authorities now believe that Monis acted alone and was not connected with the rebel group. However, that just shows how dangerous ISIS is, according to Mr Key. Although the group wasn’t directly involved, they are “extremely well-sourced,” and therefore were able to reach out to other people.

“They’re using the Internet in a way that’s never been seen before, to build this outreach capacity and to target the very sort of people that we’ve seen in Australia overnight; to tap into people and to use them as a domestic terror threat type of organisation,” the PM said, adding that NZ should continue to stand up to ISIS.

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Sydney Siege Over: 2 Reportedly Killed in Lindt Café Hostage Drama; Gunman Identified As Self-Styled Sheik Man Haron Monis