Court warned Mashid Doukoshkan would reoffend weeks before alleged Perth grandmother bashing

A commonwealth prosecutor warned a freed immigration detainee would reoffend yet still did not oppose his bail, eight weeks before he is accused of participating in a shocking home invasion, robbery of a Perth grandmother.

While a prosecutor warned Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, centre, would reoffend, she did not oppose his bail.

A commonwealth prosecutor warned a Perth court that freed immigration detainee and declared drug trafficker Mashid Doukoshkan would reoffend yet still did not oppose his bail, eight weeks before the 43-year-old is accused of participating in a home invasion and robbery in which grandmother Ninette Simons was bashed unconscious.

A court transcript of Doukoshkan’s appearance at the Perth Magistrates Court on February 20 shows prosecutor Kirsty Stynes told magistrate Tanya Watt: “The prosecution does have concerns about his ability to not commit further offences, particularly in relation to the curfew … Not­with­standing that … we do not oppose bail with a personal undertaking being imposed, but want to make it very well known to the accused that that’s the position of the commonwealth today, but further breaches may not have the same response in terms of attitude towards bail.”

At that point, Doukoshkan was charged over what The Australian has been told were considered highly suspicious breaches of the curfew placed on him after he and 151 other immigration detainees were released by a High Court decision last November.

Doukoshkan was meant to be in his East Perth residence between 10pm and 6am each day but the ankle monitor he was wearing at the time showed multiple outings at odd hours.

When Australian Federal Police tried to question him about this, he declined to participate in an interview.

His lawyer, Stacey Byrne, told the court: “In terms of the actual offences themselves, he doesn’t wish to provide an explanation, mainly because he doesn’t wish to provide an excuse.”

The maximum penalty for each of Doukoshkan’s breach charges is five years’ imprisonment.

Ms Watt told Doukoshkan: “Look, Mr Jamshidi Doukoshkan, you are on very thin ice.”

“The commonwealth is being very generous today because quite frankly if they didn’t consent to the release of you on bail, I wouldn’t be bailing you.”

Doukoshkan was in detention because successive governments wanted to deport him. He was jailed for eight years in 2017 over an attempted drug operation so serious that the court issued him with a drug trafficker declaration, an apparent warning to future courts and police about the gravity of his conviction.

Ms Watt asked about Doukoshkan’s monitoring device and was told he was still wearing it.

For reasons that have not been explained by the Albanese government, Doukoshkan was not required to wear a monitoring device at the time he is accused of bashing and robbing Ms Simons at 7pm on April 16.

The 73-year-old later told how three men pretended to be police to gain entry to the house, tied up her 76-year-old husband, Philip, then beat her unconscious.

It is clear from the February 20 transcript that when Ms Watt granted bail to Doukoshkan, she believed he would continue to wear the monitor.

Doukoshkan was released on bail on three occasions in the lead-up to the alleged assault on April 16 and had his ankle monitor removed months earlier.

The commonwealth admitted it did not oppose bail when Doukoshkan was hauled before the court for breaching his visa conditions on February 20, after earlier claiming it had.

On Thursday, WA Premier Roger Cook urged commonwealth authorities to use every tool at their disposal to keep a close watch on released detainees, declaring he was “disappointed” to hear that Doukoshkan had his ankle monitor removed in March following a decision of the commonwealth’s Community Protection Board.

He said the board of former law enforcement figures set up by the government in December to respond to the crisis needed to take a precautionary approach to its management of the detainees.

“It’s a matter of making sure that a tracking system is used where it is necessary and I want the commonwealth to have a precautionary approach in relation to that,” he said.

“If there’s any doubt in people’s minds whether these people represent a risk to the community, well then obviously we’d like to see electronic monitoring and other supervision methods being an important part of keeping us safe.”

The Albanese government refused to confirm how many freed detainees were currently being monitored.