WAR CRIMINALS IN OUR ’BURBS
Inaction by Australian investigators has allowed dozens to settle quietly into the community, writes Charles Miranda
Australia is a potential haven for foreign war criminals and terror suspects, with dozens believed to be living quietly in the community.
Despite suspicions of links to murder, executions and human rights abuse, the suspects are believed to have come into the country as migrants and refugees from a range of conflict zones including the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian wars, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Rwanda and the Middle East.
A recent Australian Federal Police intelligence report citing the AttorneyGeneral’s Department concluded “there are up to 70 Balkan identities wanted for war crimes in Australia”.
In 2019, it found there were another 33 suspected war crimes suspects in Australia, mostly involving Sri Lankan military and revolutionaries, referred for potential prosecution, and another 34 for with five still living in the community.
It concluded: “To date there have not been any successful war crimes prosecutions in Australia, highlighting the complexity that investigations of these type present.”
But, despite the United Nations and special investigators in The Hague amassing 10 million pages of crimes and suspects scattered across the globe linked to the former Yugoslav conflict alone, Australian investigators have never bothered asking for evidence. There is also a mass of documentary evidence related to Syrian conflict suspects.
Bob Reid, former operations chief for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), set up to probe atrocities during the Balkan wars, said that in 25 years working for the group he could not recall Australia formally asking for access to files.
“We were getting requests on a daily basis from Germany, Canada, the United States, Sweden, from France, who are doing national prosecutions now in their countries, they’re not extraditing them back … but nothing from Australia,” he said on a visit to Australia this week.
“I’ve got no doubt there would be war criminals here, I think the majority are true refugees but out of that there would be a handful that are not and it’s not just the Bosnians and Rwandans, it’s Syria, it’s Libya, all those countries where they have had some type of conflict.”
The Un-led investigations into war crimes had quietly sent investigators to interview witnesses who had moved to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide as victims of crimes to help prosecution of suspects being pursued by other foreign governments.
Reid, who has helped track down and arrest more than 160 war criminals including, famously, the “Butcher of Bosnia”, Ratko Mladic, and has just spent a year in Africa for the Un-led probe into Rwandan genocide, said it was logical criminals would be here.
A spokesman for the AttorneyGeneral’s Department said: “The department does not hold information regarding the number of suspected war criminals presently in Australia.”
Australia’s Croatian and Albanian community leaders suspected there were at least 20 known Serbian war criminals living in Australia.
“The federal government has really taken a three monkeys approach when it comes to the Balkans. I don’t know why, but there are people here suspected of having committed appalling crimes,” investigative journalist Branko Miletic said.