Despite coming from Shiite Iran, “Sheik Haron” is a Sunni Muslim, most likely from southern Iran.

Via Daily Mail:

Man Haron Monis – also known as Sheik Haron – has been named as the gunman holding up to 15 people hostage in a Sydney café is believed to be an Islamic State preacher who is on bail for accessory to murder.

The 49-year-old man lives in southwest Sydney, but is originally from Iran and a self-proclaimed sheik, has previously accused the families of Australian dead soldiers of being murderers and also been charged with sexual assault, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Arriving as a refugee in Australia in 1996, the hostage taker was charged with accessory – both before and after the fact – for the murder of his ex-wife – who was allegedly stabbed and set on fire on a flight of stairs in her apartment building in Sydney.

The man’s current partner was charged with murder but they both received bail as the case was deemed too weak.

He was also arrested for the sexual assault of a 27-year-old woman in 2002 after luring her to his clinic following claims he was as an expert in astrology, meditation and black magic, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Update via Daily Telegraph:

A MUSLIM cleric who wrote “grossly offensive and deplorable” letters to the grieving families of killed Australian soldiers and the victim of a bomb blast has been ordered to give hundreds of hours back to the community whose values he tarnished.

The self-styled Muslim cleric Man Haron Monis was this afternoon sentenced to 300 hours of community service, and ordered to abide by a two year good behaviour bond.

Monis, 49, from Liverpool, pleaded guilty to 12 charges of using a postal service in a menacing, harassing and offensive way between 2007 and 2009.

He admitted sending letters to eight families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and the family of Craig Senger, an Austrade official killed in a bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2009.

Judge Mark Marien said the letters were written as a result of Monis’s “very strong political views” about Australia’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan, but said the letters were written very soon after the deaths of the men and came at a time that “would [have been] extremely hurtful and distressing for them.”