Freed detainee Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan ‘kicked out of donated digs’

A freed immigration detainee who was granted bail after repeated curfew breaches was also kicked out of his government-supplied accommodation because of anti-social behaviour, a court transcript shows.

Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan under arrest.

A freed immigration detainee who was granted bail after repeated curfew breaches was also kicked out of his government-supplied accommodation because of anti-social behaviour less than 10 weeks after his release, a court transcript shows.

Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, a declared drug trafficker since 2017, is accused of participating in an April 16 home invasion in which Perth grandmother Ninette Simons was bashed unconscious.

He had been released from the Yongah Hill detention centre in the West Australian wheatbelt town of Northam on November 11 and asked to leave his Perth accommodation on January 17.

Doukoshkan had been living at the City Stay Apartments in Perth after he and 151 other immigration detainees were released by a High Court ruling in November.

On April 10, he had pleaded guilty to trespass and driving without a license.

The court was told these charges were laid after management asked Doukoshkan to move out but he returned to collect some belongings.

Refugee advocates have told The Australian City Stay Apartments was one of the places provided as interim accommodation to the freed detainees by the federal government, via a contractor.

The prosecutor said: “On 17 January, 2024, the accused was kicked out of the location due to ongoing anti-social behaviour and was advised he was not to return to the property by management.”

Doukoshkan had made arrangements for others to return his belongings but he did not get all of them, the court was told, so he did return and was waiting in the carpark for his things to be brought to him when he was spotted. Police also discovered on that day that his license was expired.

On Wednesday, Anthony Albanese blamed the Perth Magistrates Court for releasing Doukoshkan after he was charged with breaching his curfew, despite the commonwealth not opposing his bail in February.

The Prime Minister also refused to take responsibility for Doukoshkan’s alleged attack on Ms Simons, pointing to the Community Protection Board’s recommendation that his ankle bracelet be removed and the court’s decision to grant him bail.

“It’s a board which is independent of politicians that makes these recommendations. And with respect to bail, that’s a decision of a court here in WA,” Mr Albanese told 6PR radio.

“I’ve made it clear, it’s certainly not a decision that I would have made, but it wasn’t a political decision – it was a decision by a court.”

Magistrate Tanya Watt said in February she wouldn’t have allowed his bail if the commonwealth had opposed it, but Mr Albanese rejected claims it would have been harder for the WA court to grant bail if it was opposed by commonwealth prosecutors.

He has repeatedly said it was a mistake for the Community Protection Board to recommend against monitoring the accused man with an ankle bracelet but that argument was undermined when Immigration Minister Andrew Giles admitted his own delegate signed off on the ankle bracelet’s removal.

Mr Albanese called on the Senate to pass his government’s deportation powers, designed to force unco-operative immigration detainees to go home, when parliament returns next week.

“We have put forward the strongest possible legislation,” he said. “The last piece of legislation that we brought forward was voted upon by Labor and Coalition members in the House of Representatives on the Tuesday and was then opposed and deferred by the Coalition and the Greens political party on the Wednesday and kicked off into a committee process so that that legislation has still not been passed. I hope that the Senate passes that legislation next week.”

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the Coalition was considering 16 substantial recommendations its senators had put forward in a parlia­mentary report, after Mr Giles called for the Coalition to give the bill “unconditional support”.

“When is the government going to reintroduce the bill?

“We’ll then hopefully be in a position to state ‘This is how we think the bill could be improved’ because as you remember, the government tried to rush this through the parliament,” Mr Tehan told Sky News.

“We don’t want to see unintended consequences.”