Sydney Hostages Reveal Plot To Kill Gunman

Two young men taken hostage by the Sydney siege gunman have revealed they were planning to fight back.

Joel Herat, 21, and Jarrod Morton-Hoffman, 19, were both workers at the Lindt Cafe in downtown Sydney when gunman Man Haron Monis took them and 16 other people hostage.

Over the following 16 hours, Monis terrorised his hostages but Mr Herat and Mr Morton-Hoffman plotted to stab him with box cutters and gain freedom for themselves and the other hostages.

It was only concern for their fellow hostages that stopped them.

In an interview with 60 Minutes on Australia's Channel 9, Mr Morton-Hoffman said that, if someone had jumped Monis and pinned his arms, "I would stab him in the jugular" artery in his neck.

He recalled how he thought: "I've got this knife in my pocket and I know Joel (Herat) has a knife in his pocket and we are so close, we can do this."

But he told how Monis had his gun on his knee pointed directly at pregnant hostage Julie Taylor.

Mr Herat said he contemplated stabbing Monis as he was forced to take his turn holding an Islamic flag against a cafe window.

He said: "He was right below me sitting on the lounge and (I thought) do I stab him? What if I miss? What are the consequences of that, you know, who's he going to shoot?"

For Mr Herat, the risk of messing up any strike on Monis - however calculated and courageous - ultimately proved too great.

"What if I, you know, dive and then kick the gun out of his hand and stab him? But, you know, I just couldn’t end up doing it. I just... yeah I just couldn't.”

Other hostages have also spoken of their escape from the cafe.

Bae Jie-un, 20, who had been working her first shift since returning from holiday, and Elly Chen, 22, who had been employed at the cafe for less than a week, told Seven Network Australia how Bae unbolted a door, enabling the pair to escape without the gunman noticing.

"I would have felt guilty if I ran out by myself with someone right next to me," Bae said of Chen. "I had to get her out there with me. I told her it's a now-or-never type of situation."

Bae said she still finds it difficult to look at the photo taken of her running into the arms of a waiting police officer as she escaped, a photo seen around the world.

The cafe's 34-year-old manager, Tori Johnson, was killed after Monis forced him to kneel on the floor and then fired a bullet to the back of his head using a sawn-off shotgun after a second group of hostages escaped, a coroner's court was told last month.

Police then stormed the cafe, fatally shooting Monis and accidentally killing Katrina Dawson, a 38-year-old lawyer.