Sydney Radio: Host Ray Hadley At Center Of Siege

Ray Hadley

Australian 2GB morning host Ray Hadley received several phone calls from one of the hostages held for 16 hours at a Sydney café Monday. As the situation escalated, police sent a negotiator to the studio to handle the calls, which kept coming as the siege unfolded.

Hadley told CBC News he was initially skeptical about the call, so he spoke to the individual off the air.

The Sydney café siege ended with 3 dead, including gunman.

"I spoke with a young man who was having instructions barked at him by a person … speaking in English but with an Arabic accent," Hadley said. "That person told him that he wanted me to convey that he wanted to speak to our prime minister, Tony Abbott, that he wanted an ISIL (ISIS) flag conveyed to the café.… There were other demands. They were quite strange."

The radio host gave police the mobile phone number of the hostage, and they confirmed it was the same person they had spoken with earlier.

Police asked Hadley not to broadcast the information, a request he complied with even as more calls came in during the crisis. A negotiator was sent to the studio to handle the calls while Hadley stayed on air.

The negotiator who was sent to the station by police took over handling the calls while Hadley stayed on the air — from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The negotiator fielded calls from the young man, but also from "other female hostages who were inside" the café, the radio host said.

"I've been doing this for 30 years, and I've never been in this situation before," he said.

"I'm not a negotiator; I'm a radio host."