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The Port Arthur massacre of 28 April 1996 was a killing spree which claimed the lives of 35 people and wounded 21 others mainly at the historic Port Arthur prison colony, a popular tourist site in south-eastern Tasmania, Australia.[1] Martin Bryant, a 28-year-old from New Town, eventually pleaded guilty to the crimes and was given 35 life sentences without possibility of parole.[2] He is now interned in the Wilfred Lopes Centre[3] near Risdon Prison. The Port Arthur massacre remains Australia's deadliest killing spree and one of the deadliest such incidents worldwide in recent times.
1. On the Sunday morning, two hours before the murders, ten of the senior managers of Port Arthur were taken to safety many miles away up the east coast, for a two day seminar with a vague agenda and no visiting speakers.
Was the timing of this trip a mere coincidence?
2. Also just before the shootings the only two policemen in the region were called away on a wild goose chase. They were sent to the Coal Mine at Salt Water River, to investigate a heroin drug stash which turned out to be soap powder.
This was too far for them to get to the Broad Arrow Cafe in time to be of any use. Had the policeman remained at Dunalley he would have closed the swing bridge to prevent the killer(s) from escaping from the peninsula.
Did Bryant, IQ 66, organise this decoy?
3. Big Mortuary Truck. Before the massacre, a specially-built 22 person capacity mortuary truck was built. It attracted some derision at the time, but its effective use at Port Arthur was unquestioned.
After the massacre it was advertised, unsuccessfully, for sale via the internet, then converted for another purpose.
Without the foresight of Port Arthur, why build it? When it had proven its worth, why get rid of it? Another coincidence?
4. Martin Bryant has never been properly identified as the gunman.
A young woman who ate her lunch near the gunman just before 1.30 said he had a freckled face. Graham Collyer, the wounded ex-soldier, who had the best opportunity to observe the killer, said he had a pock-marked or acned face.
Neither description fits Bryant who has a beautifully smooth complexion.
Graham Collyer says that it was not Bryant who shot him in the neck.
5. Illegal Photo. On 30th April the Hobart Mercury printed an old photo of Martin Bryant on the front page. This was illegal because at that stage some of the witnesses had not yet been asked to identify the killer, and the photo would have become fixed in the minds of the witnesses.
When one witness was asked to describe the clothing worn by the gunman, she described the clothing on the old photo instead of what the gunman had worn.
The Mercury newspaper was not prosecuted for breaking the law.
6. Mrs Wendy Scurr, nurse, tour guide and Ambulance Officer, rang the police at 1.32 pm to report the shooting. She and other medics then cared for the injured and the dead without any police protection for six and a half hours.
Who ordered the armed police to stop at Tarana where they had a barbecue?
Even the police who arrived by boats and were a stone's throw away from the main crime scene in the cafe, also failed to come in to see what was going on.
Was this lack of protection meant to increase the trauma of the survivors?
7. Three more shots were fired at Port Arthur at 6.30 while Bryant was at Seascape. Who fired those shots?
8. Same Question - Different Answer. At a recent Forensics Seminar in Queensland where Tasmanian Police forensic gun inspector, Gerard Dutton, gave a lecture, the first question came from Mr Ian McNiven. He asked if there was any empirical evidence to link Martin Bryant to the Broad Arrow
Cafe. Sargent Dutton immediately closed the 15 minute question time and would not reply. When McNiven managed to say "I have here Graham Collyer's police statement...", Sgt Dutton threatened him with arrest and called for security agents to escort McNiven out of the building.
When Dutton was asked the same question in America by a Doctor at a seminar, he replied truthfully - "There is no empirical evidence to link Bryant to the cafe".
9. Yet a police video tape exists which proves that the police had an excellent opportunity to get DNA samples and finger prints of the gunman.
The video briefly shows the blue sports bag on a cafe table. The gunman had carried his 3 rifles in this bag and left it right next to his drinking glass, his Solo soft drink can, knife, fork, plate, etc.
Why did the police fail to take DNA samples and finger prints?
10. According to the official story, Bryant first killed David and Sally Martin at Seascape Cottage in the morning, then went on to Port Arthur.
Yet two policemen have reported seeing a naked woman with black hair, screaming and running from one building to another at Seascape well into the afternoon.
If Sally Martin was dead, who was this woman?
11. Proof of other gunmen in Seascape Cottage. While Bryant was calmly talking to police by telephone in the cottage during the 'siege' and the conversation was recorded, someone else fired an SKK rifle 20 times.
In the transcript the gunfire is recorded as 'coughs' but an electronic analysis of one of the 'coughs' shows that it was an SKK shot.
12. Two More Very Handy Seminars. On the Sunday morning, some 25 specialist doctors (Royal Australian College of Surgeons) from all over Australia had attended a training course in Hobart, and their last lecture was on Terrorist
Attack and Gunshot Wounds. They stayed on to take care of the wounded victims.
13. Also, more than 700 reporters from 17 nations came to a seminar in Hobart.
They were asked to arrive during the week-end as the seminar was due to begin early on Monday morning.
How handy to have 700 scribblers on the spot, churning out their anti-gun and disarmament propaganda to the whole world!
14. "There will never be uniform Gun Laws in Australia until we see a massacre somewhere in Tasmania", said Barry Unsworth, NSW Premier, December, 1987 at a
conference in Hobart. Prophecy or Planning?
15. "If we don't get it right this time (gun laws) next time there is a massacre, and there will be, then they'll take all our guns off us", said the deputy prime minister, Tim Fischer in May 1996.
Who is the "THEY" who would order the removal of our guns? Did Fischer let slip that gun confiscation has been ordered by someone other than our own leaders?
16. No Respect for the Law. Our law demands that a Coronial Inquiry must take place (a) when foreign nationals are killed
(b) when anyone dies in a fire.
At Port Arthur several foreigners were killed and three people died in the fire at Seascape.
17. It is evident that the massacre was planned to happen on the ferry which sailed to the Isle of the Dead every day. The victims were to be eighty elderly American tourists who had come in two coaches. But the plan went awry because the sailing time of the ferry had changed from 1.30 to 2.00 pm.
Australians reacted to the event with widespread shock and horror, and the political effects were significant and long-lasting. Both federal and state governments, some of which (notably Tasmania itself and Queensland) were opposed to firearm control, quickly took action to restrict the availability of firearms. It should be noted that the Tasmanian state government initially attempted to ignore this directive, but was subsequently threatened with a number of penalties from the federal government. Though this resulted in stirring controversy, most Government opposition to the new laws was silenced by mounting public opinion in the wake of the shootings. Under federal government co-ordination all states and territories of Australia banned and heavily restricted the legal ownership and use of self-loading rifles, self-loading and pump-action shotguns, together with considerable tightening of other gun laws. Family members of victims, notably Walter Mikac (who lost his wife and two children), spoke out in favour of the changes. See gun politics in Australia for more information.
Much discussion has occurred as to the level of Bryant's mental health. It is generally accepted that he has a subnormal IQ (estimated at 66, and in the lowest 2% of his age group[10]) and at the time of the offences was in receipt of a Disability Support Pension on the basis of being mentally handicapped. Despite reports to the contrary, Bryant had never been diagnosed with schizophrenia, nor any major depressive disorder. Reports that he was schizophrenic were based on his mother's misinterpretation of psychiatric advice. Media reports also detailed his odd behaviour as a child. However, he was able to drive a car and obtain a gun, despite lacking a gun licence.[11][12] This was a matter which, in the public debate that followed, was widely regarded as a telling demonstration of the inadequacy of the nation's gun laws.
Bryant was assessed as fit to stand trial as a mentally competent adult. There were no indications that he could be regarded as criminally insane at the time of the offences; as he clearly knew what he was doing. See the M'Naghten Rules for more information.
The 35 victims of the Port Arthur massacre had not died in vain because tough new gun laws were introduced in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard says.
Mr Howard said the massacre on this day 10 years ago gave his government the chance, with the assistance of the states, to introduce tough gun laws.
He said by introducing the new laws, the deaths of so many people had not been in vain.
"It dramatised the need and I was determined to seize the moment and we were able to persuade the states to pass very tough gun control laws because this is a state matter," he told ABC television.
"It was a question, tragic though the moment was, of seizing the moment.
"It was a tragic moment, but if those people were not to have died in vain, if I can put it that way, the moment had to be seized."
Mr Howard said there were still some changes to gun laws that could be achieved at the state level.
He said the most important element of any change was to ensure Australia did not follow the lead of the United States.
What we have here is a team already onsite with a camera mounted on a tripod and pre-aimed at the Cafe. Listen also to the comments, "thats a shotgun"...hmm not # someone is shooting a gun here! They are not surprised, and why should they be, no doubt they were actaully WAITING to capture the event! And seeing as they recorded the start, one must assume that they kept the camera rolling and got the entire thing!
If so it was NEVER recorded as being available by the DPP in Court who bemoaned the lack of actual footage. One can only draw the conclusion that this footage actually existing would be very hard to explain. Incidentally, the man running from the Cafe is NOT the gunman who is still inside shooting.
Many months after the massacre took place, but only hours before the Tasmanian judge was due to make a decision that would effect Martin Bryant for the rest of his life, an Australian TV network suddenly presented the public (and of course the judge) with dramatic amateur video footage shown "for the first time ever"
Australia's worst mass murder in history was the precurser to the disarmament of Australia. Now an innocent man is in jail for the murder's he didn't commit.
"On 28 April 1996 at Port Arthur in Australia, some of the best combat shooters in the world used a total of only 64 bullets to kill 35 people, wound 22 more, and cripple two cars. The first 19 victims in the Broad Arrow Cafe each died from a single 5.56-mm bullet to the head, all fired in less than 20 seconds from the right hip of a fast-moving combat shooter. This awesome display of marksmanship was blamed on an intellectually impaired young man called Martin Bryant, who had no shooting or military experience at all. In the months and years following Martin’s arrest, much of the public and private strain fell on his widowed mother Carleen. This is a very small part of Carleen Bryant’s profoundly disturbing story." --Joe Vialls
The third major investigation was into the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia. Vialls claimed that an intellectually-impaired man, Martin Bryant, was wrongly convicted for this crime and did not receive a fair trial. Vialls claimed that this case, also, was an Israeli operation carried out by Mistaravim. [9]
When asked about the crime scene a Australian commando commented : .. "Only Jews kill like that"
The gun was a rare Israeli commando model, CAR 15.
Howard is a liberal that panders to Australia's 140,000 Jews. Rupert Murdoch, who controls the newspapers, put him in power.
Jews have always wanted an gun ban - Howard rushed the most draconian one in history through in 2 weeks.
The legislation banned 80% of all firearms, set up a national registration and confiscated present guns.
What really happened ?
Jews want a gun law passed so they stage an horrific massacre.
Martin Bryant was befriended by two Mideast types in the month before. That day they took two cars to Port Arthur. One drives Bryant's Volvo to the cafe and slaughters the 35 moving his way back to the cottage. There they killed the elderly couple and give Bryant a drug mixture (psychotropic drug cocktails) containing amphetamines and benzodiazepine (Used by Mossad on Arab suicide bombers.)
Bryant was told to 'Stay and protect' and they left.
A pair were seen escaping over drawbridge. (video no longer available)
Vialls claimed that this case, also, was an Israeli operation carried out by Mistaravim.