The Snitch: Sad twist in tale of child soldier-turned Sydney lawyer
People were shocked to read in September that Deng Adut, who survived life as a child soldier in Sudan to start a new life as a Sydney lawyer and father, took out an AVO against the mother of his child. It was later dropped.
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The story of Deng Adut, who survived life as a child soldier in Sudan to start a new life as a Sydney lawyer and father of a young child, has captivated the hearts of many.
So plenty of those people were shocked to read in September that he had taken out an AVO against the mother of his child — and fellow lawyer — Tamryn Lee Beveridge.
It was never followed up and The Snitch can report the AVO was withdrawn on September 20, a week after it was first mentioned.
The report said Mr Adut sought police help following an alleged incident.
Yesterday, Ms Beveridge said: “There was absolutely no basis for the AVO. It was purely vexatious. At the time the AVO was taken out, Deng was not of sound mind.”
Comment was sought from Mr Adut.
‘FAIRY’ DIB FEELS ‘FERRY’ SILLY
Mostafa Dib is a criminal with an identity crisis.
Authorities seem to have no idea how to spell his name, with the drug kingpin known variously as Moustapha and, in a recent court case, as Mostafa.
There is even confusion as to whether his nickname is “Ferry” or the less threatening “Fairy”.
The issue has even been raised by judges dealing with Dib, police gathering intelligence and one confused undercover who gained the drug kingpin’s trust in 2017.
Snitch recently had some clarity on the issue after Dib pleaded guilty to conspiring to smuggle 800kg of MDMA into Australia alongside Michael Ibrahim — the younger brother of Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim who is not accused of any illegal activity.
It came after the hard work of an undercover who befriended Michael who then vouched for him to deal with Dib, who was reluctant to do business with anyone he didn’t trust implicitly.
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At one stage in the investigation, the undercover asked Michael and syndicate member Ryan Watsford: “Is it Ferry or Fairy?”.
He was told it was Ferry.
In Australian Federal Police documents relating to the case, known as Operation Veyda, Dib was also referred to as Ferry.
The issue also caused confusion for NSW Supreme Court Acting Judge Graham Barr in 2012 when he was sentencing Dib on a charge of wounding with intent to murder Ahmed Banat and the murder of Anita Vrzina.
Explaining that the victim had known Dib since high school, Acting Judge Barr said: “He knew him by the nickname ‘Fairy’, or it may have been ‘Ferry’.”
It’s possible that Dib goes by all names, as the acting judge noted.
“(Police in the case asked the victim) whether he could tell him who had done this to him. (The victim) wrote the nickname. He spelt it “Fairy”,” the judge told the court.
Dib was acquitted of both charges on appeal.
BIKE BLOW UP
Phillip Byrnes waged a one-man war against the share bikes strewn all over the streets near his Bondi home to the point where he got charged with larceny for throwing a helmet in the bin.
Byrnes polarised opinion when he featured in a news story after being filmed tipping over oBikes on the foreshore of Bondi Beach in October 2017.
Police showed what they thought of that when they charged him with larceny over an image of what they thought was Mr Byrnes throwing a helmet in a bin.
But it ended up costing taxpayers $3300 to pay for Mr Byrnes’ lawyers when Magistrate Lisa Stapleton threw the charge out.
Mr Byrnes hadn’t been named in the story but authorities used the images to track him down.
In court, Mr Byrnes’ lawyer Paul McGirr argued that the image didn’t definitively prove that Mr Byrnes was throwing the headwear in the bin and, in fact, he may have been getting it out of the receptacle.
Outside court, Mr McGirr said the case should never have proceeded.
“If common sense prevailed we would not have been put in a position where we had to seek for our costs to be paid,” he said
GETTIN’ WIGGY WITH IT
Snitch loves it when our judges are forced to wade into the murky world of street slang.
This week we present to you Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Simpson grappling with the word “gronk”.
This column has spoken to enough crims in its time to know the word is established in their lexicon to describe idiots.
We were recently pointed to a 2016 appeal judgment of Justice Simpson where she felt the word gronk was perplexing enough to warrant pointing out.
“He noted a coincidence of a particular (somewhat unusual) word (‘Gronk’) used by the appellant in the Corrective Services NSW recordings, and by ‘M2’ in the listening device recordings,” she wrote in her judgment.
The case related to Raymond George Morgan, who was appealing a conviction for breaking into a bank and other offences. He lost.
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