Fijian baby killer with ’cultish power’ deported after life sentence

Raymond Akhtar Ali, convicted of murdering and cutting up his newborn baby girl in 1998, was quietly deported from Australia having served a life sentence in jail. The baby’s grandmother says her daughter was under a spell when the horrific event took place.

CHAHLEEN Blackwell should be turning 21 this year.
But instead she was murdered by the hands of her father, a halal butcher, within minutes of being born.
Killed in one of Queensland’s most horrific murders, to a man described as having a “cult-like” power over people.

Raymond Akhtar Ali, convicted of murdering and cutting up his newborn baby girl in 1998, was quietly deported from Australia having served a life sentence in jail.

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The baby girl was born to his young butcher shop assistant Amanda Blackwell, who was then 20, who lived with Ali and his wife Bronwyn at Logan Village, south of Brisbane.

Blackwell was found guilty of manslaughter and her four-year sentence was suspended after nine months.

Speaking for the first time since his deportation Blackwell’s mother tells Insight she never liked or trusted Ali.

Raymond Akhtar Ali, with former lover Amanda Blackwell, was charged with the murder of her newborn baby Chahleen Amy Blackwell.

“It was like a one-on-one cult effect,” her mother, who asked not to be named, says.

“I’m pretty pissed off that the defence for her didn’t say that it was Stockholm syndrome because that’s what it was.
“The minute I laid eyes on him when I very first met him, I didn’t like him, I didn’t trust him,” she says.

“It’s just a thing I have when I see people, I know whether they are trustworthy, you can call it a sixth sense if you like and it was just something that I felt with him.”

The grandmother says she wasn’t able to see her daughter when she lived with Ali who was “playing us against each other”.

If she had known her daughter was pregnant she would have removed her from the house, she said.

Undated pic of convicted baby killers Amanda Blackwell and Raymond Akhtar Ali.

“He told us that she didn’t want anything to do with us,” Blackwell’s mother says.
“He told her that we had wiped her, that we didn’t want anything do to with her.
“Every time I got there, as soon as we pulled up he would pull up at the gate saying she doesn’t want us there.
“It wasn’t her first job, he made her quit her first job which was a deli assistant at Moorooka Woolies,” she says.

“We found out afterwards that the only time she ever went out was when he took her.”

Ali was flown back to his native Fiji in 2017 having spent almost 20 years in jail but his deportation was not made public.

He would now be aged in his 60s. It’s unclear if he has gained employment since his release.

Newborn baby Chahleen suffered severe fractures after she was most likely crashed against a hard surface and her ribs were broken along with her collarbone.

Her right leg was severed and she had been cut in half at the abdomen with her reproductive organs removed. Ali always maintained his innocence.

Logan Village SES members search the area where the remains were found.

When the case first came before the courts, Crown prosecutor Paul Rutledge said Chahleen’s life was “extinguished not by gently placing a pillow or hand over the mouth and nose of the defenceless infant, but by the infliction of dramatic and violent force.”

“This was a killing done without pity or indeed the slightest vein that the murderer was repulsed by what they were doing,” he told the Southern Districts Magistrates Court.

After he was convicted and sentenced to life in jail Ali took the case to higher courts but the appeals were dismissed by the Court of Appeal and High Court.

SES members search Logan Village crime scene in September, 1998. Picture: Richter Nathan

Bronwyn, still living in Brisbane, said she was busy when contacted by Insight and did not answer further calls. She was never alleged to have had any involvement in Chahleen’s death.

Chahleen would be celebrating her 21st birthday this year.

“It’s just something we will never get over,” Blackwell’s mother says.

“We’ve missed all sorts of milestones.
“How can you ever get over something like that?

“On her birthday I think about her ever time and I think about her in-between that.
“Apart from Bronwyn he (Ali) had no reason to stay here, he wasn’t an Australian citizen.”

Blackwell has settled into a new life and lives in Brisbane. She has married and has children.

Police divers search dams for the murder weapon used in the killing of Chahleen Amy Ali.

During his time prison Ali took the government to court because he had to eat vegetarian food rather than halal meat while in Maryborough jail. He was awarded $3000 compensation.

He has since demanded $20,000 over claims he did not have access to a toaster while in Woodford jail and had to use a shared industrial griller which was used by other inmates to cook ham.
He also claims he was served non-halal food such as pork while at the PA Hospital. The complaint is with the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told Insight the government strengthened laws to ensure foreigners convicted of terrible crimes had their visas cancelled and were removed from the country.

“This was a horrible murder of a defenceless baby and the law worked as intended - Australia is a safer place without criminals like this living here,” he said.