The author of a book that made false claims about taking part in the Port Arthur police operation has had his publication withdrawn.
The memoir, Special Operations Group: The Inside Story of the Most Feared and Fearsome Unit in Australian Policing, by Christophe Glasl was pulled from sale by Hachette on Monday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The move came after Victoria Police flagged “concerns about the accuracy of the book, including some of the author’s claims about jobs he attended”.
Former team commander and sniper with the special operations group (SOG), Craig Harwood, posted a review on the book’s Amazon listing encouraging the public not to buy it.
“It is not factual,” his review read, with members of the SOG reportedly contacting the publisher with their concerns about the book’s legitimacy.
He told the publication following the book’s removal from sale that he would “step back into the shadows” now the publication was no longer for sale.
“The mission of having this fictional tale removed from public consumption and the unit’s integrity protected has been achieved and as such I wish to step back into the shadows or merge back into the foliage,” Mr Harwood said.
In the book, Christophe Glasl claimed he was sent to Tasmania along with other SOG members on April 28, 1996, on the day of the Port Arthur massacre.
He detailed in chapter 18 the tactics used by Tasmanian police and the SOG to capture Martin Bryant, the man convicted of murdering 35 people.
Among other claims, he wrote that SOG’s Sniper One, codenamed Sierra, was prepared to stop the attempt to capture the shooter with one shot.
Mr Harwood wrote in his review that Glasl was “never deployed to the Port Arthur incident and makes other operational claims about situations he was not present at or jobs he was never on”.
“The publishers did no fact checking,” he added.
Victoria Police confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald that Glasl was not part of the Port Arthur operation.
Glasl previously became emotional while recounting a false experience at Port Arthur.
In a podcast interview last year with Narelle Fraser, who served in Victoria Police for 27 years, he claimed he arrived in the evening and went to Seascape Cottages where Bryant was.
“I was affected emotionally by the heroic acts of these people that were actually in the Broad Arrow cafe at the time he started firing,” he claimed, while becoming upset.
The author has not publicly commented following his book’s withdrawal.