Alarm as jail terms finish
Far North’s ‘tinnie terrorist’ prisoners among wave set for release in next 12 months
FOUR of the Far North “tinnie terrorists’’ will be released from a Victorian jail within weeks as authorities give no indication they will try to keep them behind bars.
The four were part of a group of would-be jihadists who set off from Melbourne in May 2016 towing a boat with a plan to leave Australia via Cape York to take up arms for Islamic State.
Their mission ended in the middle of a remote road about 300km northwest of Cairns, when a convoy of police, who had been following them for miles, surrounded them.
Just prior to being stopped, they had pulled into the Palmer River Roadhouse to fuel up.
The four men are among eight convicted terrorists due to be freed in Australia this year, including a man who will walk free in Brisbane on Friday.
A wave of Islamist terrorists completing their sentences in coming months has alarmed law enforcement and security agencies, who are concerned about their capacity to monitor them if they are released on control orders.
The Morrison Government has given no indication it intends to seek continued detention orders for some, which would cage them for up to three years beyond the end of their sentences.
“Eligible offenders are assessed on a case-by-case basis on advice from law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies,’’ a government spokeswoman said. “It is not appropriate to comment on the details of individual cases.’’
The orders, which have never been used in Australia, set a high legal threshold and take months to prepare.
They include a detailed risk assessment of the inmates’ behaviour in jail.
Paul Dacre, Antonio Granata, Kadir Kaya and Shayden Thorne, four of the so-called “tinnie terrorists’’ who had intended to sail to the Philippines to overthrow the government, have almost completed their federal sentences after pleading guilty to foreign incursion crimes.
Dacre, Granata and Kaya were all refused parole by federal Attorney-General Christian Porter last year but are due to be released on May 8, when their four-year sentences