During the federal election last year, John Howard categorically assured Australians that SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters and proceeded to score heavily against Kim Beazley for daring to suggest that the death by drowning of 353 people could have something to do with us.
His priority, Howard said, was to bring to justice the evil people-smugglers who preyed on the desperate for profit.
Lo and behold, we end this year with the extraordinary claim by the government that it can’t extradite the people smuggler who forced people to board the unseaworthy, chronically overloaded SIEV-X with the help of Indonesian officers bearing guns because we don’t know where it sank!
You’ve got to hand it to a government which now wants an early election to give itself powers to detain and interrogate Australians not suspected of any crime for up to seven days – it sure knows how to have its cake and eat it.
You see, if SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters, Abu Quassey could be tried for manslaughter in Indonesia. If it sank in international waters – as confirmed by every bit of evidence dragged out of the intelligence bodies and the immigration department, and the evidence of the local Indonesian Harbor master – Australia can extradite Abu Quassey when he gets out of an Indonesian jail on January 1.
If it sank in Indonesian waters, the Indonesians could try him for murder.
Alas, the government SAYS its legal advice is that it can’t be proved either way, and asks us to believe that means he can’t be charged by either country. Not the country SIEV-X sailed from, or the country it intended to sail to, it expects us to believe. The legal advice (naturally the Australian people aren’t allowed to see it) comes more than a year after the tragedy, and, coincidentally, just before Abu Quassey goes free.
The government has said over and over that since SIEV-X the Indonesian government has fully co-operated in bringing people-smugglers to justice. It was to have passed people-smuggling laws this year, in which case we could have extradited Abu Quassey on his release regardless of where SIEV-X sank. Lo and behold the Indonesians haven’t got around to it, and Australia doesn’t seem to care about their tardiness.
The AFP commissioner Mick Keelty has used every Sir Humphrey trick in the book to delay telling the truth about SIEV-X. Way back in July he said he couldn’t give evidence to the Senate inquiry because he could very well extradite Abu Quassey for murder, and that Australia could well have jurisdiction because the boat was headed here.
Months on, oh dear, the legal advice ruled out doing anything, and even that bit of information had to be dragged out of him during questioning by Senator John Faulkner last month. Keelty made headlines when he said we could try Abu Quassey for murder, yet made no public announcement when he decided to drop it.
He’s then claimed public interest immunity from answering questions about whether the AFP was involved in putting tracking devices on the boats. All boats, that is, except SIEV-X, where he says the AFP did no such thing. He studiously avoided saying whether the Indonesian police the AFP paid to “disrupt” boats did.
Maybe it’s not in the interests of the Indonesian or the Australian governments to bring to justice the man responsible for our region’s worst maritime incident.
Looking back on a long year, its amazing to think that SIEV-X wouldn’t have got a guernsey as news if a pesky ex-diplomat called Tony Kevin hadn’t taken an interest. Before he started asking questions, the government was sitting pretty. Howard’s statement – backed by the defence force – that it sank in Indonesian waters, and the Australian navy’s statements that it knew nothing of SIEV-X until after it sank saw to that.
Both statements were untrue. Since then, Defence minister Robert Hill has banned key defence personnel from giving evidence and Mick Keelty has delayed testifying pending the extradition of Abu Quassey, then taken every question he could answer on notice. Getting information has been worse than pulling hen’s teeth.
I don’t known about you, but I don’t trust John Howard and his spooks to respect my rights and my freedoms.
For the latest twists in the SIEV-X cover-up, go to http://sievx.com. Here’s a piece I asked Tony Kevin to write for Webdiary on crunch time for SIEV-X. If Abu Quassey walks free on January 1, Australians lose their chance to find out what really happened. You’d have to say that on its performance this year, that’s exactly the result the government wants.
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It is crunch time on SIEV-X
by Tony Kevin
Oh no, not SIEV-X again nagging at our under-exercised consciences in the Christmas holiday season? I’m afraid so: Webdiary readers, please read this and act if you can!
Abu Quassey, the self-confessed organiser of the SIEV-X voyage that on 19 October 2001 sank, drowning 353 mostly Iraqi and Afghan asylum-seekers on route from Indonesia to Australia, including 146 women and 142 children, will thanks to Australian Government deliberate inaction walk free on 1 January 2003, at the end of a short Indonesian jail term for minor passport offences.
He will disappear and not be seen again. Yet he must carry in his head much of the truth about the grubby Australian – Indonesian police undercover “sting” industry, otherwise known as the AFP’s People Smuggling Disruption Program, that led to these deaths.
If we want to “get the bastards who did this”, we only have a very few days left to help build a sense of public outrage that will upset the carefully contrived Australian Government plan to have Quassey released on schedule.
Or do we as a nation think that 353 deaths don’t matter? If that is what Australians think after Bali and with a “war on terror” – ie a non-UN sanctioned allied invasion of Iraq – staring us in the face, then God help us all. Terror does not discriminate between “good” and “bad” Australians. What goes around will come around.
Yet here is the upside. If Australia, even now, does the right thing on SIEV-X – if we show that we are not afraid to confront possibly ugly truths about ourselves in establishing full accountability for the SIEV-X atrocity – then the world, including the Muslim world, will again respect Australia for its honesty and courage, and will respond accordingly. The Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – share a passion for truth, justice and accountability. All three believe in the indivisibility of justice, and in one law for all under God.
So this issue is of vital national security importance as well as being about doing the right thing by our neighbours and our own values of equal justice for all.
Here is a basic guide to the main elements of where SIEV-X is now and why it is crunch time now.
I say this because strategies on both sides are now in place, and the outcome is finely poised. David is filling his sling to go up against Goliath. It could go either way. This is a historic contest for Australias soul.
Over the top? No, because something horribly evil was done to the 353 people who drowned on SIEV-X. It is in our power now to expose the truth of this, or to shrug and turn aside from it “because they were only Muslim asylum-seekers”.
Whatever we do is going to affect Australian politics. Establishing the truth of what happened on SIEV-X could halt the seemingly inexorable trend towards an increasingly authoritarian, xenophobic and uncompassionate national security state in Australia. It could shock us into seeing the ugly direction in which John Howard is trying to take this country.
Questions:
We know that all asylum-seeker boats leaving Indonesia in 2001 were leaky and overcrowded and that many sank: might SIEV-X’s sinking have simply been the largest-ever tragic accident of this kind? Might it simply have been the result of a greedy people smuggler overloading his boat to maximise his profits ? Was Abu Quassey acting alone?
Answers:
No, no and no.
SIEV-X’s overload factor was four times the design load and double that of any previous overcrowded boat of this size that reached Australian island destinations. It was a “coffin ship”, loaded to capsize in the first stretch of choppy water it reached.
Abu Quassey was not a “real” people smuggler. He was a “sting” operator who worked in collusion with Indonesian police disruption teams to set up phoney voyages sabotaged to fail through engine breakdown or sinking. The purpose was to deter people-smuggling ( while making some money from asylum-seekers on the way). Quassey was initially a people-smuggler’s driver. He was recruited by Indonesian police disruption agents and set up in business in late 2000 . He became rich very quickly. One or two early voyages were successful, to establish his reputation as a people smuggler. Many later attempted voyages failed. He was never harassed by police though his passport status was known to be vulnerable. Someone was protecting him.
It is known that Quassey offered free places on SIEV-X to people on his business records who had lost their money on his previous Sting voyages that were set up to fail while still close to Indonesia. The significance of this is that he was so anxious to quickly load up this boat that he was giving places in it away – hardly the act of an over-greedy people smuggler. Quassey was supported by some Middle Eastern accomplices and by large numbers of supporting Indonesian police who facilitated an overnight bus journey of 420 people in a convoy of five buses, from Cisarua (Bogor) across Western Java and by ferry across the Sunda Strait at Merak, to a police-run hotel near Bandar Lampung, Sumatra where the passengers hid out for the day. Police loaded the people onto SIEV-X by launch-loads, using armed force. Quassey had a latest model police radio-telephone and a gun. He helped the forced loading. He beat some passengers when they tried to get off. He lied to passengers that they would be joining another larger boat for the trip to Christmas Island; they never did. One particular group of passengers (Mendean Christians) were warned by a co-religionist accomplice of Quassey to get off the boat as soon as they safely could: they did so, at the Karakatu (Krakatoa) islands near Bandar Lampung. They warned the others as they were disembarking.
Indonesian police tracked the boat, possibly using a tracking device concealed on the boat and previously supplied to them by AFP (see below) .A police (or military) patrol boat went out to inspect the wreckage in the early evening a few hours after the sinking. It made no attempt to rescue survivors. Some strong swimmers were seen to have swum to the boat. They have not been seen since. Police gave the coordinates to Indonesian fishing boats who went out to rescue 44 remaining survivors the next day. The rescue location coordinates are on official Indonesian harbormaster records.
No police have been arrested. There has been no enquiry. Quassey refused to tell SBS media who his Indonesian police or military accomplices were but he was visibly frightened by the question.
There is no doubt Quassey was the organiser, that it was a planned sabotage operation, and that police worked with Quassey on it. Even on 24 October 2001, five days after the sinking, The Australian’s well-informed Jakarta correspondent Don Greenlees reported (in “Overload kills on voyage of doom”):
Survivors interviewed yesterday said they had told Australian officials of the identity of the main people-smuggler behind the operation — a man identifying himself as an Egyptian citizen named Abu Quessai. He is believed to be associated with one of the biggest people-smuggling rings in Indonesia, operating out of Jakarta.
But signals from Indonesian police yesterday suggested there was unlikely to be any action taken against the smugglers over what would be a major case of manslaughter. Indonesian police spokesman Brigadier Saleh Saaf said the information received by police was that the boat had not sunk but had run out of fuel. Despite the harrowing stories of survivors, Brigadier Saaf denied anyone had drowned.
Question:
OK, let’s accept that Indonesian police were involved with Quassey in this huge crime – but can you prove an Australian causal connection ?
Answer:
There is enough multi-source “smoking gun” indicative evidence to make this a hypothesis likely. It certainly merits a full-powers independent judicial investigation where questions cannot be evaded. There is a case to be answered, and this is the view of a Senate majority of all Opposition parties and independents (Senate motion passed on 10 December)
The evidence falls into three subsets:
1. Motive
SIEV-X’s sinking was enormously convenient in terms of timing, scale of death and deterrent shock value to the Howard Government. It came at a time of pressure. An election was imminent. Howard had to show that his aggressive border protection strategies were working. The Pacific Solution was legally shaky and being ridiculed. HMAS Adelaide’s interception of SIEV-4 (the “kids overboard” SIEV) had failed in sending the boat back.
We know that Howard was briefed on 8 October that an overhang of 2500 suspected unauthorised arrivals were waiting in Indonesia to come to Australia and that this had to be prevented “at all costs”.
Four days later the order went out from Jane Halton’s boat people task force in the Prime Minister’s Department to the AFP to “examine scope for beefing up the people smuggling disruption program”.
SIEV-X sank a week later. Asylum-seeker voyages dried up within a couple of weeks. Howard won the election on tough – and successful – border protection policies. Yet the election was close.
Another humiliating border protection failure might have cost Howard the election. Imagine if 397 SIEV-X passengers had been rescued by the Australian Navy and had to be dealt with by Australian authorities. The mockery from the Labor Party could have cost Howard the election.
2. Means
The AFP’s People Smuggling Disruption Program was an effective, initially clandestine instrument, in place in Indonesia since at least September 2000. Now that its cover has been blown, we are assured there was nothing sinister about it. If so, why were its details so carefully concealed for so long? It operated under a Protocol (still not public, but probably quite general and bland in its wording) signed at that time that hung off an existing Australian – Indonesian police cooperation agreement against organised crime.
This is one reason why it has been important for the Australian Government to talk up since 1999 the idea that people smuggling is a dimension of organised transnational crime, to provide the cover for such agreements with countries where ferrying people across porous borders is seen as a kind service to people in distress rather than a crime. Australia set out to criminalise “people-smuggling” as right down there with drug-running, sexslave trafficking, and gun-running. It has been quite successful in this, especially since the tragedy of SIEV-X.
The reality before 2000 was that people smuggling was small-scale water-taxi work, combining the boats and crews of out-of-work Indonesian fishing boats denied access by Australia to traditional fishing grounds around Ashmore Reef and Middle Eastern entrepreneurs seeing the chance to provide a service and make a dollar.
It is not coincidental, as my former Soviet diplomatic counterparts used to say, that as AFP interest and budgets for anti-people smuggling activity in Indonesia increased, so the “organised crime” dimension of people smuggling began to grow. That is because the AFPs network of undercover informants – actually they were more than this, they were active sting operators – were getting into the industry and increasing market share through favoured Indonesian police treatment. People like Kevin Enniss, whose activities have been exposed by the Channel Nine Sunday program, became major people smugglers.
A still current AFP Association webpage survey of AFP activities in 2001 speaks unashamedly of the need for AFP “to fund ‘sting’ operations, whereby the AFP establishes small shipping companies in strategic locations known for smuggling illegal immigrants”.
The AFP has defended Enniss people smuggling as necessary cover for his information-gathering. Actually it was much more than that: He was a disruption agent who organised voyages, took money , and then disabled and sank his own boats – all as part of the plan to discredit people smuggling over a period as a dangerous and extortionate trade with which asylum seekers should not engage.
So while the Australian Embassy gave away T-shirts and leaflets warning asylum-seekers against the dangers of using people smugglers, people like Enniss – with at least some AFP knowledge and approval were touting for business so as to fleece people and prove the Embassy warnings were right.
Enniss had migration problems in Indonesia – he ran into trouble with the regular police who fingered his people smuggling activity – but the Embassy made representations on his behalf to allow him to stay. Obviously his work was seen as important. There were others like him, no doubt still are, whose cover has not been blown as Enniss cover was blown by the Sunday program.
The other dimension of the AFP People Smuggling Disruption Program that underpinned the whole murky operation was the set of five Indonesian Police Special Intelligence Units ( INP SIU) . Under the auspices of the Protocol, the AFP in 2000 funded 20 POLDA officers, who were selected by AFP and tasked to set up five INP SIU. These 20 men were trained intensively by AFP officers in anti-people smuggling operations. They comprised four officers each from the POLDA jurisdictions of Bali, NTT (West Timor), NTB (Flores-Lombok area), Metro Jaya, (Jakarta) and Jawa Barat ( West Java) .
Their training took place in Bali in October 2000 and included investigation techniques, surveillance, information management and financial acquittal procedures. They received funds from the AFP. They were tasked to set up POLDA teams for the ongoing gathering of information, arrests and prosecutions of Indonesian-based people smugglers and their networks.
The Protocol allowed for the AFP and POLDA to exchange advice regarding target selection, technical and management support of operations, informant management, information facilitation and assistance in financial reporting.
Remember, people smuggling was not and is not illegal in Indonesia. The AFP basically had set up what were in effect their own teams of mercenaries – a police force within the INP that did what the Australian trainers and paymasters in general terms wanted done.
But the AFP in the end created a monster. AFP Commissioner Keelty admitted reluctantly on 11 July that AFP paid INP to disrupt people smuggling (not, he stressed, on a specific fee-for-service basis) but he also admitted that AFP had no idea how their INP SIU operatives went about their tasks. He said that if POLDA units had sabotaged engines as a way of disrupting people smuggling, AFP would not approve but would not know about it either.
This revealing exchange sparked off by Senator Cook demonstrates the philosophy of deniability that lies at the heart of the whole disruption operation in Indonesia: Keep in regular contact with your INP SIU buddies, hint at them what you want done, give them any equipment they need, but don’t be around when it happens and make sure you only know as much about it as you want to know and when you want to know it : Remember Keelty’s phrase: “target selection, technical and management support of operations, informant management, information facilitation”.
Its easy to model SIEV-X in this frame. Suppose the word went out from Canberra around 8-12 October for the AFP liaison officers to tell their INP SIU buddies – we want a big operation, serious deterrence. INP SIU has Quassey in place. They – not the AFP – tell him to get a large passenger load together quickly. INP SIU or somebody like Enniss gets a boat for Quassey – it moves westwards around the coast from Cilicap, thereby usefully generating a lot of incorrect intelligence reports to send to Australia about possible earlier Quassey boat departures.
The West Java and Jakarta SIU teams organise a smooth road transit for Quassey’s bus convoy to Bandar Lampung, provide day accommodation in their hotel, and prepare the boat. They provide the armed muscle to load the frightened unwilling passengers aboard. They activate the tracking device previously given them by AFP and they thereby track the boat. After it sinks, they go out and do a visual check. They organise the fishing boat rescue the next day. Finally probably not before 20 or 21 October – or even later – they tell AFP what was done.
We don’t know, because the AFP has refused to reveal any of its intelligence on SIEV-X. There were at least six reports, and the information that might exist about SIEV-X in the PM & C PST and DIMIA intelligence reports lies under acres of black blot-out ink. Ony an independent judicial enquiry could establish what lies beneath the blackouts. Meanwhile the AFP has achieved maximum deniability, and the job is done.
If you think this far-fetched, consider two more points.
In September 2001, the Indonesian Government cancelled the Protocol. Keelty has not clearly explained why, but he vaguely agreed it might have something to do with envy from other POLDA units that were not sharing in the benefits provided by the AFP to their SIU friends. Or just maybe, the Indonesian Goverment was becoming concerned about the way the program was corrupting some members of their police force and turning them into Australian mercenaries. In any case, Keelty said, the AFP did not let the cancellation of the Protocol faze them: they just went on with their established working connections informally. So those arrangements were informally still operative when SIEV-X sank but not under Protocol cover. Such cover was restored in early 2002 under new intergovernmental umbrella agreements in which something similar to the original Protocol has no doubt been discreetly reinstated.
Secondly, read the intelligence reports that went to Howard and Ruddock on 23 October from the People Smuggling Taskforce in PM&C and from DIMIA. Read the amazing numerical detail : how many passengers, nationalities genders and ages, how many were previously in touch with IOM and UNHCR etc. Even the exact dimensions of the boat, 19.5 by 4 metres. These guys were betrayed by their own passion for reporting detailed facts. The material that came down to Canberra on 23 October could not possibly have come from talking to survivors. It came from the organisers of the voyage. To me that is very persuasive evidence that SIU were working with Quessay; that he was their boy
Then there’s the manifest systemic concealment and obfuscation of facts in response to Senators’ questions. You’d have to read Committee Hansards or even better see videoed proceedings to get a full sense of this. I won’t go into details here. But senior witnesses with lots to hide were very good at dragging things out and offering selective well-timed leaks of carefully packaged information, until a cynical press got totally browned-off and bored. It largely worked. In the end hardly anyone was following the evidence outside the Committee, except the batteries of officials monitoring proceedings from the Defence war room hidden away next door.
Governments don’t go to such lengths to hide and spin-doctor information from Senators unless they are anxious to hide something pretty important and pretty disreputable.
Question:
What is the current situation – why is it crunch time?
Answer:
The Senate inquiry Report has been out seven weeks but the issue won’t die. The Australian Defence Force has been at least temporarily absolved but there is intense investigative focus from Senator Faulkner on the AFP’s disruption program. Our SIEV-X movement has put the need to stop Quessay’s upcoming release at the heart of our campaign, and there is now a fascinating and creative dynamic between our activity and opposition parties activity in the Senate. The two motions passed this week are landmarks for judicial accountability.
Senators Collins and Bartlett brought the Quassey extradition issue to a head this week. They called for explanations as to why the government was not pressing the extradition for homicide option, as Keelty had indicated in July was in progress. Suspicion of homicide, unlike people smuggling, is extraditable in both countries now.
The Government’s answers on 11 December (Senator Campbell in the Senate) and 12 December ( Senator Ellison in written reply to good questions from Senator Bartlett) were stunning in their cynicism and indifference to mass deaths by drowning.
Here are Ellisons key points: (Hansard page 7285-6)
Abu Quassey .. is due for release on 1 January 2003.
The Australian Government is working with other Governments in the region to seek to apprehend Abu Quassey in relation to his alleged involvement in people smuggling activities and bring
him to Australia to face the charges. As people smuggling is not currently an offence in Indonesia, the dual criminality required for Australia to request his extradition from Indonesia does not currently exist. Australian authorities are continuing to work towards criminalisation of people smuggling in the region and Indonesian authorities have indicated that legislation would be introduced into the Indonesian Parliament this year criminalising people smuggling.
In relation to a potential murder charge in either the Australian or Indonesian jurisdiction, the AFP has not been able to establish the location where SIEV X sank, therefore, it is not possible to establish the relevant jurisdiction for any prosecution relating to the deaths on board. Four first instance arrest warrants have been sworn in Australia in respect to Quassey for alleged offences relating to organising Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels (SIEVs). The first three warrants for his arrest were sworn on 3 June 2002 and span alleged offences that occurred between February 2000 and August 2001. The latest warrant for his arrest is in relation to his alleged involvement in organising SIEV X in which 353 people died when it sank in October 2001.
The issue of the fourth warrant in Brisbane on Friday last week follows the compilation of a brief of evidence which was submitted to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecution. This brief of evidence in relation to SIEV X includes evidence from interviews with survivors of SIEV X in Australia. The strength of the evidence supporting any warrant is a matter for the courts to determine. It is not appropriate for the brief of evidence to be scrutinised by Parliament prior to any legal proceedings and any public discussion could prejudice the investigation. Once an existing warrant is acted upon, the matter becomes sub judice.
The swearing of first instance warrants means an Interpol alert can be issued and it will ensure that the Australian Government can seek to extradite Abu Quassey should circumstances allow. Australia respects that Indonesia, as a sovereign state, must make its own decision whether or not to investigate any particular matter.
Like Pontius Pilate, the Australian Government now washes its hands of the murder issue because of a claimed inability to establish the jurisdiction in which SIEV-X sank ( ie either in Indonesian territorial waters or in international waters). If in the latter, Australia could seek extradition on grounds that the deaths took place on the high seas on route to an Australian destination, Christmas Island.
This is self-serving nonsense. Quassey cannot be allowed to fall between the cracks into a legal limbo when 353 deaths are at issue. The issue is too important and there must be a way to deal with this. Are any lawyers reading this?
In fact there is very strong multi-sourced information that the boat sank 50-65 miles south of Indonesia, well out into international waters. That evidence includes:
* Jakarta Harbormaster’s official report of survivor rescue coordinates reported by rescue boats which are 51.5 miles south of Java
* two authoritative intelligence reports of the afternoon of 23 October 2001 in PST and DIMIA putting the sinking in international waters (PST) and 60 nautical miles south of Indonesia ( DIMIA)
* various media reports of 24-25 October 2001 (eg.The Australian op.cit,. by Greenlee: “About 80km from land at 2pm on Friday, the fishing vessel began to take heavy water, listed violently to the side, capsized and sank within an hour.”
The Indonesian Government will hopefully reject the trap the Australian Government is setting for it. If the Indonesians now say publicly that on the basis of public information they are satisfied that the boat sank in international waters and that they would facilitate an Australian homicide-based extradition request, this would put the Quidditch ball back in the Australian court. Let us hope that Indonesia comes to this morally correct as well as self-interested conclusion – why should they be left to carry the can for any capital crimes committed under Australias disruption program ?
This is the strategy our SIEV-X movement will drive over the next 17 days. We want to expose our government’s cynical irresponsibility in a matter of 353 deaths. Judge Ellison’s statement for yourself. We need public support -lots of it.