CTP fraudster Thamer Ari pleads for mercy to let him and his family stay in Australia
The would-be refugee convicted of being the ringleader of a multimillion-dollar third-party insurance scam says he wants to apologise to Australia and plead to stay here with his wife and eight children.
NSW
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The would-be refugee convicted of being the ringleader of a multimillion-dollar third-party insurance scam says he wants to apologise to Australia and plead to stay here with his wife and eight children.
Thamer Ari, 39, has been locked up in Villawood Detention Centre for more than two years since his release from jail and time is running out for his wife and children, whose latest visa ends in June.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said last month that he would deport the family back to their home country “tomorrow” but Iraq will not issue travel documents for people forcibly sent home.
Ari told The Telegraph from Villawood through an interpreter that he recognises he could be in the detention centre “forever”.
The impasse leaves the taxpayer paying $1600 a fortnight for Ari’s wife Alaa and children, aged between 14 and two years old, and paying their rent for the home where they all live in Sydney’s west.
Ari’s bridging visa was cancelled after he pleaded guilty to cheating the state’s third-party insurance scheme by organising car crashes in Sydney’s west involving other refugees he met on Christmas Island before arriving in Australia in 2013.
He said he wanted Mr Dutton and Immigration Minister David Coleman to know he said sorry. The family lost their bid to stay late last year in the Federal Circuit Court and Ari said he had been told the only person who could save them was Mr Coleman.
“I apologise and I will swear in front of whoever they want that I will never do it again,” Ari said yesterday. “I love this country.”
A spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs said they could not comment on individual cases.
Originally published as CTP fraudster Thamer Ari pleads for mercy to let him and his family stay in Australia