Criminal refugee wins appeal to avoid deportation

A violent African refugee who attacked a police officer and assaulted a woman while she was holding a baby has won his appeal against deportation.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Picture: Gary Ramage

A violent African refugee who attacked a police officer by twisting his testicles and assaulted a woman while she was holding a baby has won his appeal against deportation on the grounds he may be unsafe in his native Burundi.

The court ruling has prompted an urgent Home Affairs Department review as it has ramifications for violent non-citizens trying to avoid deportation by arguing they are ill-equipped to return to their home country due to safety and language concerns.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told The Australian he had asked his department to report back to him on the case of the 33-year-old refugee, known only as LJTZ in court documents, who has a significant history of violence since being allowed into Australia in March 2005.

The commonwealth is particularly concerned that the Federal Court appeared to place greater store on the man’s potential difficulties returning to his homeland than on his well-documented capacity for violence in Australia.

While saying he was unable to comment on the specifics of the case, Mr Dutton said community safety needed to be paramount in the issue of deporting criminal non-citizens.

“I cannot comment on this case as I might be a decision maker in relation to it, but I have instructed my department to review the matter,” he said.

LJTZ was first jailed in March 2014 for seven years relating to two incidents of serious offending. The first involved extortion where he visited a man at the house of his former female partner and oversaw the planned bashing of that man by two other men. LJTZ and his former partner then stole the man’s ATM card and cleaned out his bank account.

The second case of violence also involved two accomplices where LJTZ and two other men attacked a woman while she was holding a baby. When neighbours called the police, LJTZ set upon one of the officers, a probationary constable, by trying to grab his police revolver from its holster and then biting his arm and squeezing his testicles.

LJTZ’s visa was cancelled on character grounds in April 2018. He was given leave to appeal the decision in July 2020.