An image on the website appears to show Monis wearing the same headband that photographs suggest he donned during the Martin Place siege, reading: “We are ready to sacrifice for you, O Muhammad.” 
 
 Shortly after Tony Abbott’s government was elected in September last year, Monis sent the prime minister a letter inviting him to a live debate in which he said he would prove that “Australia and Australians will be attacked” as a result of the country’s participation in the war in Afghanistan.  Monis had conviction for sending offensive letters to relatives of Australian victims of terrorism and troops killed in Afghanistan 
 
 Until his entry into the global media spotlight as the shadowy figure at the centre of the Sydney siege, Man Haron Monis had long been viewed as a fringe figure in Sydney’s Islamic community, his self-radicalisation rooted in grievances against the Australian government and increasing marginalisation among his peers.  Sydney siege: Man behind Martin Place stand-off was Iranian Man Haron Monis, who had violent criminal history 
 
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 The gunman killed during the siege at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney's Martin Place was an Iranian cleric with a violent criminal past. That website was shut down as Monday’s siege developed, and police asked media outlets to refrain from giving him a platform as he held 17 hostages in the Lindt cafe in Martin Place. The self-proclaimed spiritual healer had achieved a degree of notoriety as the author of “grossly offensive” letters sent to taunt parents and relatives of Australians killed by extremism in Indonesia as well as troops who lost their lives in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2009. He was charged in November 2013 with being an accessory before and after the fact to the murder of his ex-wife Noleen Hayson Pal, who was stabbed and set alight in a Werrington apartment block. He also faced numerous charges relating to his time working as a “spiritual healer” – including 22 counts of aggravated sexual assault and 14 counts of aggravated indecent assault – and had been bailed for allegedly being an accessory to the killing of his former wife. Well known to the Australian police, he had been consumed by his conviction for the offence, unsuccessfully challenging the conviction in the high court last year and making several vehement and erratic public statements claiming to be innocent.
– As Australia mourns two hostages killed in a Sydney cafe yesterday, many are wondering what gunman Man Haron Monis was doing on the streets in the first place. The Iranian-born cleric, who was killed when police commandos stormed the cafe, was on bail for around 50 counts of sexual and indecent assault and for charges of being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife. The 31-year-old mother of two was stabbed repeatedly and set on fire with the use of lighter fluid last April, allegedly by Monis' girlfriend. The crime happened in an apartment stairwell. More: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the government will look into why the 50-year-old was out on bail and why he did not appear on the country's terrorist watch list, the BBC reports. "How can someone who has had such a long and checkered history not be on the appropriate watch lists, and how can someone like that be entirely at large in the community?" he wondered at a press conference today. "These are questions that we need to look at carefully and calmly and methodically." Just three days before he walked into the cafe with a gun and took 17 people hostage, Monis had failed in an attempt to overturn a conviction for sending "grossly offensive" letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. The country's High Court rejected his application to hear a fresh constitutional challenge to the charges against him, for which he was sentenced to 300 hours of community service. Monis, who declared himself to be a sheikh and a "spiritual healer," was seen as a "fringe figure" in Sydney's Islamic community, according to a Guardian profile. Shia Muslim leaders had asked police to probe his claims to be a leading cleric and last week, he announced on his website that he had converted to Sunni Islam and pledged allegiance to ISIS. The lawyer who represented Monis in the murder case tells the Australian Broadcasting Company that his client, who came to the country as a refugee in 1996, may have thought he had "nothing to lose," hence "participating in something as desperate and outrageous as this." He says that while in prison, Monis suffered some "very unpleasant events, involving matters of excrement over himself and his cell," and he is certain that the siege was the act of a "one-off random individual," not an organized terrorist group.