KUALA LUMPUR – Another former immigration detainee in Australia has been re-arrested, making him the sixth ex-prisoner to have broken the law this week after being released last month by a contentious high court ruling.
The Australian Federal Police said the 36-year-old Eritrean-born man was arrested last night for allegedly breaching curfew, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.
The man will appear before the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court today, and faces a maximum of five years in jail and a AUD93,900 fine, upon conviction.
The much-contested high court ruling – which stated that the indefinite detention of persons who cannot be deported to their home countries is illegal – saw almost 150 detainees freed from immigration detention, even though some were serving penalties for violent offences.
This included Sirul Azhar Umar, the former police commando convicted of murdering Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006. He fled to Australia in 2015, ahead of a Federal Court ruling to uphold his murder conviction and death sentence.
Last Sunday, Afghan refugee and convicted sex offender Aliyawar Yawari was re-arrested for allegedly indecently assaulting a woman the night before in Adelaide.
Another former detainee, 45-year-old Mohammed Ali Nadari, was found with cannabis in western Sydney last Saturday.
Meanwhile, Abdelmoez Mohamed Elawad, 45, was charged at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday for stealing luggage from an airport traveller while Emran Dad, 33, was arrested in Dandenong for failing to fulfil his reporting obligations as a sex offender.
The fifth detainee – a 39-year-old man – was arrested in Queensland on Thursday, with NSW police seeking his extradition in the next few days. They said the man had an earlier conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and breached parole.
In the wake of the court ruling, the Australian Parliament passed preventive detention laws that would see those released from immigration detention locked up again if they pose any risk of committing serious offences, as well as the use of monitoring devices such as ankle bracelets. – December 9, 2023