Baby killer demands compo for being denied a toaster

Baby killer Raymond Ali has demanded compensation after being denied a toaster in prison.

Baby killer Raymond Ali has demanded $20,000 compo for being denied a toaster in prison.

Baby killer Raymond Ali has demanded $20,000 compensation after being denied a toaster in prison, saying it was his basic right due to his religious beliefs.

The former halal butcher, sentenced to life for murdering and dismembering his newborn daughter, says he was forced to ­either miss meals or use a communal grill that other inmates used to cook ham.

Ali also claims that during a two-week stay at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital he was served meals including a roast pork sandwich, pea and ham soup and a cheese and ham croissant despite being a Muslim and it being known he should be given only halal food.

Ali murdered his baby, Chahleen, minutes after she was born in 1998 at Logan Village, south of Brisbane, to cover up an extramarital affair.

His trial in 2000 was described as one of the most horrific in the history of the Queensland courts, with evidence the baby’s head had severe fractures and that nine of her ribs were broken. She was cut in half, had a leg severed and her uterus was cut out.

The baby’s mother, Amanda Blackwell, who worked in the married Ali’s butcher shop and was his family’s live-in babysitter, was found guilty of manslaughter.

Ali’s complaint to the Anti-Discrimination Commission of direct and indirect discrimination has been referred to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

There was public outrage in 2013 when the same tribunal awarded Ali $3000 compensation for being fed a vegetarian diet instead of halal food for four months in Maryborough prison.

Ali is pursuing the new payout from overseas after being released on parole and deported in 2017.

A Corrective Services Department spokeswoman would not comment, saying the matter was before court and Ali had a legal right to privacy.

The department sought to strike out Ali’s latest complaint after he failed to comply with orders requiring him to provide details such as how he was treated less favourably than others.

QCAT refused and gave Ali more time, saying complex discrimination laws were difficult to understand for complainants without legal representation.

Ali says most prison units had toasters and many prisoners had personal sandwich-makers, but that he was denied these at Woodford Correctional Centre, north of Brisbane.

He complained to prison management and three separate independent official visitors, who help resolve complaints.

Ali says he was told to instead wash the communal grill before using it, a task he says couldn’t be done in his half-hour window for breakfast.

“It was impossible for me to wash the griller while 50 other inmates waited in the queue,’’ he wrote in an email. “This would have created a lot of violence in the unit.”

One prison official visitor had told the general manager it was his “basic right to have (a toaster) due to his religious beliefs”.

A QCAT member last month found Ali did not deliberately fail to comply with orders about providing information and that a “fair trial” of the complaint was still possible.

“Striking out the complaint at this stage would be a drastic step, and if the complaint were to be struck out, the tribunal would not be offering an accessible hearing of the complaint in a fair and just manner as it is obliged to do,” the member said.