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| (Paul Chinn/SF Chronicle) |
“He didn’t look me eye to eye,” Khalik, 57, said of the 2003 meeting. “If a person doesn’t look straight to you, and talk to you, you can sense he’s hiding something, like he’s trying to dodge you or stay away from you, so the first impression wasn’t a very good impression.”
Khalik, a truck driver who moved to the Bay Area from Fiji in 1975, talked about Monis on Tuesday in his kitchen, a day after Australian police stormed the cafe where Monis had held 17 people. Two hostages were killed, though it wasn’t immediately clear how they died.
Khalik described a troubled man who allegedly helped kill his goddaughter.
Monis, an Iranian-born, self-described spiritual healer and Islamic sheikh, was charged in November 2013 as an accessory in the murder of Pal, who was allegedly stabbed and burned by Monis’ new partner. Before that, Pal had considered moving to the Bay Area with her two children — in part to escape Monis.
According to Khalik, Monis and Pal met at an Australian university in the early 2000s. Khalik and his children then visited Sydney for the wedding. It was a beautiful event, he said, and while he didn’t like Monis — who at the time went by “Michael” and said he was Egyptian — he didn’t voice his concerns to Pal’s parents for fear of upsetting them.But in 2010, Khalik said, Monis became abusive and controlling of Pal.
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