People smugglers paid by Australian spy, Indonesia police documents allege
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Version 0 of 1. New details have emerged about the voyage taken by people smugglers at the heart of allegations about payments by Australian authorities, following the release of photos of the cash alleged to have been paid. Indonesian police documents obtained by the ABC give a detailed account of the journey taken by the boat and its 71 crew and passengers, which they say prove money exchanged hands. The documents say the six crew members were recruited for the journey in April, lured with promises of a large payment equivalent to $A14,000. The boat, occupied by the six Indonesian crew members and 65 asylum seekers, left Indonesia early in the morning on 5 May. The vast majority of the asylum seekers aboard – 54 – were from Sri Lanka. A further 10 were from Bangladesh, and one from Myanmar. The boat was allegedly intercepted by an Australian customs vessel near East Timor and told it could not enter Australian waters without a valid visa. The captain was issued a warning and then released, and continued travelling for another four days before the boat was again stopped by Australian authorities in international waters. Captain Yohanis Humiang was interrogated, and told that his boat was in no condition to continue its voyage to New Zealand. Reports in the Australian newspaper on Wednesday say that Australian navy and customs authorities feared that the boat would sink, and accordingly transferred the asylum seekers to a second vessel. The vessel was then escorted back to Indonesian waters. Once they arrived, the crew and asylum seekers were split into two groups and put on two more boats owned by Australia. It is at this point, the police documents allege, that the crew members asked for and received a total of $US31,000. The Australian’s report suggests that an Australian Secret Intelligence Service (Asis) officer in plain clothes “facilitated the payment”. Photos that surfaced on Tuesday show Indonesian police with piles of US money. Monash University academic and Indonesia expert Greg Barton told ABC TV that the photos and police documents had to be taken with a grain of salt. “I think we should approach them with some scepticism. I think there’s no question that some in the Indonesian police have been culpable of cooperation and collusion with people smugglers,” Barton said. He said opacity around Australia’s border protection measures meant that the public did not have the whole picture on the incident. “For a long time, back to the previous Labor government, there have been payments made to try and elicit information from informants and to try to sort of get intelligence breakthroughs on those smuggler networks. The question is whether things have gone too far at this point,” Barton said. Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, has refused to respond to the allegations. “I think there’s a live issue here that the government needs to answer,” the opposition immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, told Sky News on Wednesday, adding that the government was quick to throw Asis “under the bus” by pointing the finger of blame at the spy agency. The former immigration minister Scott Morrison dismissed the claims, and the evidence presented by Indonesian authorities. “I’m not surprised that people make allegations,” he said. “The government’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy and program and initiative has ensured that people have always acted lawfully.” |