Everything You Should Know About Man Haron Monis, The Man Behind Sydney Siege
Man Haron Monis, who died in a gunfight with police during the Sydney siege, has been charged for sending offensive letters to the families of dead Australian soldiers and assisting in the murder of his ex-wife.
By Sadho Ram — 16 Dec 2014, 02:06 PM — Updated almost 10 years ago
Man Haron Minis, the gunman who seized hostages inside a café in Sydney, was killed in a police raid late last night, 15 December. He was on bail under 'strict conditions' at the time of the siege.
As per a detailed report by The New York Times, Monis was known to both the police and leaders of Muslim organisations as a "deeply troubled man with a long history of run-ins with the law"
“This guy was on the fringe of the fringe,” said Manny Conditsis, a lawyer who had represented the gunman, Man Haron Monis, in previous criminal cases. “He wasn’t accepted by anybody.”
Mr. Conditsis described the 16-hour seizure of the cafe, which also left two hostages dead, as “the ultimate cry for attention.”
nytimes.com
In 2013, Monis was arrested and charged as an accessory to the murder of Noleen Hayson Pal, his ex-wife and a mother of two
Noleen Hayson Pal was stabbed and set alight on the staircase of her apartment in Sydney but both Monis along with his current partner Amirah Droudis were released on bail after the case was deemed "weak" by magistrates.
channel4.com
Monis was most notably known for sending a series of harassing letters to the grieving families of fallen Australian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. Following which, he was arrested on charges of "using a postal service to menace, harass or cause offence".
As per the Wikipedia page under his name, He, together with Amirah Droudis, undertook the campaign back in 2009 and wrote the hate letters, calling the soldiers murderers, and compared them to pigs, addressing them as a dirty animal.
In one of the letters to a family of a soldier, he even called their son's body 'contaminated', referring to it as 'the dirty body of a pig'. He also described Hitler as not inferior to the son in moral merit.
Most recently, in April 2014, Monis was also arrested by Australian Sex Crimes Squad detectives and charged with the indecent and sexual assault of a 27 year-old woman at his property in 2002
During a recent court appearance in October 2014 he was charged with a further 40 sexual offences, including 22 counts of aggravated sexual assault and 14 counts of aggravated indecent assault relating to six other women.
Police allege that Monis was operating as a self-proclaimed "spiritual healer" at the time of the alleged offences.
He was on bail for these offences and was due to appear in court in relation to indecent and sexual assault charges in February 2015.
channel4.com
While it's still not yet clear why Man Haron Monis held up the Lindt café on 15 December, as Vox notes, we're starting to learn some things — including that he had more than an affinity for ISIS
According to a portion of his now-deleted website translated from Arabic by Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Monis pledged allegiance to ISIS before the attack.
"In a long and rambling Arabic passage," Gartenstein-Ross explained over the phone, "he talks about how there's the Khalifa, the caliphate of the age, and how he's proud to declare allegiance to the caliphate."
The caliphate is another way of saying ISIS.
This doesn't mean Monis had any actual connection to ISIS. In fact, it'd be shocking if he did. Nor does it mean that Monis was a calculating, rational terrorist who could be said to have taken up the ISIS cause, rather than an insane person merely latching on to ISIS rhetoric. It does, however, mean that Monis almost certainly had some political motivations on his mind when he decided to launch the attack that injured four and claimed three peoples's lives — including his own.
vox.com
The self-styled Muslim cleric, also known as Mohammad Hassan Manteghi, was born in Iran and sought political asylum in Australia in 1996. He was 50 years old at the time of his death.
Iranian-born Monis, also known as Sheikh Haron and Mohammad Hassan Manteghi, wrote on his website that he used to be Shia but is no longer. He said he "used to be a Rafidi, but not any more [sic]", using a pejorative term that some hard-line Sunni Muslims use to refer to Shias.
He denied the criminal charges against him, saying they were politically motivated. He compared the accusations of sexual assault against him to the case of Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.
His website had been suspended by the time his identity was revealed in the media in connection with the siege.
Monis' former lawyer, Manny Conditsis, told ABC News that Monis was an isolated figure.
"His ideology is just so strong and so powerful that it clouds his vision for common sense and objectiveness," he said. Mr Conditsis, who represented Monis last year when he was charged with being accessory to the murder of ex-wife Noleen Hayson Pal, said he thought the suspect might feel "he's got nothing to lose".
"Hence participating in something as desperate and outrageous as this," he said.