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Matters he's previously been found guilty of. >> chris is across the road from the lindt cafe and he's got some information to give us at this moment. so thank you for that, sean. we'll cross the chris now. chris, what can you tell us? >> we were just with the police when that operation went down and quite dramatic scenes as you obviously could see from your position as well. i'll detail what i can for you, basically. we first at the whole moment seemed to begin by the escape of by our account about six or seven of the hostages. they ran out from the right-hand side as we were looking at it, t...

So so this came to a sad end. tell us what the past 16 hours have been like. >> i spent the day at martin place just before the cafe. it was early calm despite the situation. people were gathered around almost like watching a spectacle rather than treating it as a hostage crisis. i spoke to a few residents who were evacuated due to the situation and i got the sense that this is just something australians aren't programmed to respond to. they're removed from terrorist attacks and so it was very surreal for a lot of throughout the day, even when we saw some of these hostages being released peopl...

Own but if he had help, if there's anybody who might have known about this ahead of time they'd like to know that as well. >> u.s. citizens in australia were warned to be careful. can you get into that for us, evan? >> well, last night our time, as this was going down, one of the first thing has happened was an effort to make sure that u.s. personnel -- because the u.s. consulate is just a block or so away from this cafe so that was the first thing. secondly, they were very concerned about whether there might be u.s. citizens either in the cafe being held hostage. we still don't know whether o...

Suspect. i suppose he learned from isis or took a cue from isis as far as social media use goes. >> yeah. this guy has been very active on social media, carol. he's been ranting about the u.s. air strikes against isis and against if participation of australian forces. the australian air force has been conducting some of these bombings in iraq and syria against isis so he is -- has been speaking out against that. ranting against u.s. oppression and advocating for isis. the australians in recent months have been pushing some very aggressive laws to counteract some of the radicalization because t...

Grenades. they also seem to have night vision goggles on so perhaps the fact that the cafe has been in darkness all this time, they've been managing to plan their attack much more carefully and without the gunman knowing quite so much and they seem to have really stunned him at this point. >> well, that's right. there have been police squads here today that i've never seen before in my time as a reporter. we haven't been able to report on their presence a lot but -- and that's -- the police have asked us not to because they didn't want the man in the cafe to know what was going on. but they we...