Scott Morrison vows to deport child sex assault security guard Mohammed Hassan Al Bayati
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has vowed to deport security guard Mohammed Hassan Al Bayati who arrived by boat under Labor then indecently assaulted a three-year-old girl at a Western Sydney shopping mall.
NSW
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has vowed to revoke the visa of an Iraqi man who arrived by boat under Labor then indecently assaulted a three-year-old girl at a Western Sydney shopping mall.
“He has not only committed an appalling crime against an innocent child but against the country that gave him refuge and a new life,” the Prime Minister told The Daily Telegraph last night.
It is understood Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton will today formally begin the process of cancelling the permanent protection visa of security guard Mohammed Hassan Al Bayati, who was sentenced to 4½ years prison on Tuesday.
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Earlier this year, a NSW District Court jury found the 30-year-old guilty of kidnapping with intent to obtain sexual gratification, an act of indecency with a victim under 10 years old and indecently assaulting a person under 16.
He will be eligible for parole in July 2021.
Whether he gets out then or later, Mr Morrison wants Al Bayati’s next stop to be Baghdad.
“He illegally entered the country during the period of Labor’s hopeless border failures and was rewarded by Labor with a permanent protection visa,” he said.
“It’s abhorrent and unacceptable that a young child was terrorised by someone that was granted protection in our country.”
It was Mr Morrison who, as Immigration Minister in 2014, brought in a law that a non-citizen’s visa is automatically cancelled when they are convicted of a serious crime and jailed for 12 months or more.
“This mandatory cancellation process is now underway for this convicted child predator,” Mr Morrison said last night.
“There is no place for him in Australia under our government’s tough border protection regimen.”
Al Bayati was one of the nation’s 6555 “illegal maritime arrivals” in 2011.
Then Immigration Minister, Labor’s Chris Bowen, intervened in the case in December that year and a permanent protection visa was issued to the future sex offender. Al Bayati indecently assaulted the young girl in December 2016 as her mother shopped for Christmas presents at DFO Homebush.
He worked there as a security guard. The mum had left the girl and her older sister in a play area.
After responding to a report of a lost child, Al Bayati led the girl down a set of fire stairs, exposed his penis and touched her underwear.
In sentencing, Judge John Pickering noted that after returning the girl Al Bayati had the “gall … to lecture” her mother about the danger of leaving the child. In a statement to the court, the mother said her daughter’s recovery would likely take years.
He continued to deny the crimes, however police found his DNA on the outside of the girl’s underpants.
It is believed that if Al Bayati is not deported immediately after his sentence he will be placed in detention.
Mr Morrison said: “All Australians should be safe within our local communities and my government will continue to pursue every available avenue to ensure Australians are protected.”
Mr Morrison’s 2014 visa changes strengthened the character provisions and allowed visa cancellations for non-citizens in prison.