Sarah Stephen
A Brisbane Supreme Court jury convicted 38-year-old Iraqi Khaleed Shnayf Daoed on June 8 on a charge of assisting people smuggler Abu Quassey in an attempt in October 2001 to bring asylum seekers to Australia on the boat later known as SIEV X.
During its voyage from Indonesia to Australia, the SIEV X sank, with 353 passengers drowning.
Daoed will be sentenced on June 24, and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years' imprisonment.
The jury acquitted Daoed on a separate charge of helping Quassey organise the voyage of another vessel, the Yambuck, which carried 147 asylum seekers safely from Indonesia to Christmas Island in August 2001.
Tony Kevin, author of A Certain Maritime Incident: the Sinking of SIEV X, told ABC Radio National on June 9 that the trial provided confirmation that Quassey had received high-level help from Indonesian police, involving very large resources.
Kevin said that the overloading of the SIEV X appeared to have been deliberate, and he saw this as further corroborating evidence of his hypothesis that SIEV X was intended to sink as a deterrent.
"We don't know who intended to sink it", Kevin said, but "there are a great many questions that the Senate for three years has been demanding answers to, in a full-powers judicial inquiry, and the transcripts of this trial will only lend weight to those demands."
Kevin is angry that the government has "very carefully cordoned off the question of SIEV X into a people smuggling investigation, which is really quite grotesque, because we are talking about homicide, we are talking about manslaughter on a massive scale, in waters where Australia had a duty of care".
Attorney General Phillip Ruddock told ABC Radio's PM program on June 8: "People smuggling is a very serious offence but if it ends as tragically as SIEV X did with so many people losing their lives, those responsible ought to be held accountable, and that's what we've been determined to ensure happens. That's the reason prosecutions were initiated."
In a June 9 media release, Kevin labelled Ruddock and justice minister Chris Ellison's crocodile tears over the SIEV X tragedy as dishonest and hypocritical. "In fact", Kevin charged, "the Australian government is doing nothing to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of 353 persons on SIEV X, because it fears where that evidentiary trail might lead. Government agencies methodically blocked the Senate's efforts in 2002-2004 to fully investigate the sinking of SIEV X."
Ellison issued a media release on the Daoed verdict on June 8 that contained the first official admission that SIEV X sank in international waters. It said: "In October 2001, the vessel known as Siev-X (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel - Unknown) sank en route to Australia from Indonesia in international waters, resulting in the death of 353 people."
This contrasts with a statement Ellison made to the Senate on December 12, 2002, that the Australian Federal Police "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".
Commenting on Ellison's June 9 statement, Kevin said: "Ellison's surprising admission now throws into renewed prominence the issue of what was Australia's duty of care to try to protect life during its border protection operations in the Operation Relex zone."
In a June 11 media release, Kevin asked, "How long will it be now until the Australian government also admits the necessarily consequential fact — that SIEV X sank in the Operation Relex Australian government border protection zone?"
While the evidence aired during the trial, such as the repeated accounts of the involvement of Indonesian police and coastguard in the planning of the SIEV X voyage, may not be enough to pressure the Howard government into setting up a judicial inquiry, Kevin is convinced that the truth about the Australian government's knowledge of, and involvement in, the sinking of SIEV X will eventually be revealed.
"There will be whistleblowers", he told Radio National. "Something like this doesn't stay secret for ever. People retire, their consciences start to weigh on them, they have a look at the pictures of those drowned children on Marg Hutton's website [], they think about the possible role they may have played in this. Just as Watergate finally came out sooner or later, the truth about SIEV X will come out."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 22, 2005.
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