‘Nothing to hide’
Maythem Radhi was accused of selling places on a rusted people-smuggling boat that sank with the loss of 353 lives. He, his wife and three children have been living here as refugees ever since. This week, the Supreme Court ruled the Government must decide
MAYTHEM Radhi’s wife whispers a prayer and strokes the back of her husband’s neck; he runs his hand through his curly black hair before leaning one arm forward on the boardroom table of an Auckland law office.
They shiver. Radhi and his wife know they may have only 48 hours before he’s ordered to surrender for extradition and taken to the airport.
‘‘Today my life will change,’’ he says.
Time slows to a crawl. The Supreme Court is about to deliver a ruling on whether Radhi’s case can be referred to the Minister of Justice.
Shortly after 10am, barrister Ron Mansfield strides into the room to exclaim: ‘‘We’ve won!’’
But Maythem Radhi’s battle is far from over.
Accused by the Australian government of involvement in peopletrafficking, he could yet be extradited to face criminal trial.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) allege Radhi was part of a smuggling group that sent hundreds of refugees to their deaths in 2001.
Radhi adamantly denies culpability. Since 2009 he has fought extradition all the way to the Supreme Court, pleading that his family not be ‘‘torn apart’’.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court acknowledged Radhi risked being caught in ‘‘immigration limbo’’ if he were extradited to Australia.
He’s not a New Zealand citizen, meaning Immigration NZ could deny him re-entry regardless of whether a jury finds him guilty.
International refugee treaties mean Radhi could not be returned to his native Iraq, where he would likely face persecution, meaning he runs the risk of indefinite detention similar to that suffered by detainees on Manus Island.
The Supreme Court ruled his case should be referred to Justice Minister Andrew Little.
One potential work-around would be for Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway to grant a special visa to Radhi, guaranteeing his return to New
Zealand – and to his wife and three children – regardless of any trial outcome in Australia.
It’s the latest twist in a decades-long saga that has thrown the Radhi family through a series of extraordinary hoops.
One winter night in 1996, masked men had burst into their family home in Baghdad and show Radhi’s wife through the chest.
‘‘She was dying in my hands, and there was blood everywhere,’’ he says, during an interview at the family’s Mangere Bridge home.
The bullet was meant for her husband.
‘‘They ask for money,’’ Radhi says, ‘‘and because we didn’t pay, they start shooting’’.
The attackers fled into the night. They were never found.
By the time Radhi’s wife gave birth to their first child the following year she’d made a full recovery.
But the young married couple knew they had to leave. They were Sabean, a minority religious group, and there was no place for them in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and they fled in 2000.
‘‘If we stayed it was going to get worse and worse,’’ says Radhi.
‘‘We wanted to find a place where we were free to live like normal people.’’ Together with his brother, wife, and young daughter, he escaped first to Jordan, then onward to Malaysia, and then Indonesia.
They were among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of refugees heading toward Australia.
‘‘Everyone there is coming to leave,’’ Radhi says. ‘‘It’s not that people are coming to Indonesia to stay. My family, we come there, and we want to leave.’’
Australian police allege Radhi became involved during this time with Abu Quassey, an infamous people-smuggler. They say Radhi worked as his righthand man, gathering fares for the doomed SIEV-X voyage. Radhi tells a different story. ‘‘It’s all the people helping, it’s not only me,’’ he says. ‘‘They ask, ‘which smuggler is good?’ Just because we are talking does not mean we are smugglers.’’
Radhi and his family planned to leave Indonesia on that fateful voyage, which set off in the early hours of October 18, 2001. At the last minute they heard they might be considered for asylum in the UK – a brother already lived there – so they did not board.
‘‘And then we heard the ship had sunk.’’
Just 45 people survived when their vessel, old, leaky, and hopelessly overcrowded, capsized that afternoon. Most of the 353 who perished were women and children.
One woman gave birth as the disaster unfolded. Later, her body was seen floating in the ocean near that of her newborn, joined together in death by an uncut umbilical cord.
The boat later came to be known as SIEV-X – a clinical Australian designation of Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel, yet to be assigned a tracking number.
Maythem Radhi knew many of the victims.
‘‘My friend was there and died, and really we cried,’’ he says. ‘‘My wife kept dreaming about him every day for two years.’’
Yet survivors pointed to Radhi as one of those responsible for the disaster. He was arrested by Indonesian police.
‘‘I have nothing to hide from,’’ he says. ‘‘I didn’t do anything wrong, so I went with them.’’
Then in his mid-20s, he spent four months behind bars in Jakarta in early 2002 before being released due to ‘‘insufficient evidence’’.
Australian police fought long and hard in their quest for justice.
SIEV-X mastermind Abu Quassey was arrested in Indonesia and repatriated to his home country of Egypt, where he was sentenced to five years and three months in prison.
Fellow smuggler Khaleed Daoed was found in Sweden in 2003 and extradited to Australia for prosecution, where he received a prison sentence of
She was dying in my hands, and there was blood everywhere.’ MAYTHEM RADHI DESCRIBES THE DAY HIS WIFE WAS SHOT IN FRONT OF HIM IN BAGHDAD