SA’s Keystone Cops a joke, and far from funny over detainee arrest

South Australians are united – in anger and disgust – at learning their state had become a sloppily-monitored dumping ground for a man with a proven track record of harming women.

Recently released detainee Aliyawar Yawari holding a picture of himself taken prior to being placed in detention. Picture: 7 News

Until this week, the only immigration story of note in South ­Australia all year involved a hardworking Scottish-born electrician facing deportation through a combination of Immigration Department pedantry and ministerial indifference.

Despite being lured from Scotland to Adelaide 11 years ago to fill gaps in the labour market installing solar panels, Mark Green and his wife and daughter were almost bundled onto a plane back home due to a visa error caused not by Green but a former employer who went bust.

If not for the 11th-hour intervention of Premier Peter Malinauskas and a sustained media campaign involving this newspaper, Green and his family were set to be flown home marked never to return. It was only in March this year that Immigration Minister Andrew Giles saw fit to grant the Greens permanent residency, the ruling coming after they had spent thousands in legal fees fighting to stay.

Scottish family Rebecca, left, Kelly and Mark Green with dog Maisie at Brighton Beach, Adelaide. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

It has been dispiriting to contrast the glacial and indifferent treatment of the Greens with the speed and sloppiness with which a recidivist sex offender was freed and flown at taxpayer’s expense to South Australia this fortnight.

And in the same way South Australians were united in support for the Green family, they have been united again this week – in anger and disgust – at learning their state had become a sloppily-monitored dumping ground for a man with a proven track record of harming women.

Aliyawar Yawari left immigration detention in Perth three weeks ago and was flown to South Australia – the same state where he had subjected local women to a horrific ordeal in the 2010s while working at the local meatworks in rural Bordertown.

Yawari had immigrated to SA from Afghanistan in 2010 and was first convicted of assault but acquitted of rape in Bordertown in 2013, receiving a suspended sentence. Just two months later, he sexually assaulted a woman before attacking her in the throat with a walking stick, and was found guilty and jailed with a non-parole period of two years.

After his sentence, Yawari was placed on indefinite detention but was incapable of being deported as the Afghan government does not recognise him as a citizen, his freedom three weeks ago coming courtesy of the High Court.

Just days after his release, the man described by sentencing judge Paul Cuthbertson in 2016 as “a danger to the Australian community” and “ongoing risk to women” allegedly offended again.

His victim – who federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus ­believes does not deserve an apology – was allegedly indecently assaulted while staying in the same hotel as Yawari in the northern Adelaide suburb of Pooraka last weekend.

Pavlos Motel, Pooraka, is where Aliyawar Yawari was staying. He is in custody after assaulting a woman, just three weeks after being released from immigration detention. Picture Dean Martin

The fact Yawari was placed at the hotel at all has puzzled domestic violence advocates in SA as the hotel in question, Pavlos Motel on Main North Road, has been used to provide emergency accommodation to women fleeing domestic violence and abuse.

The case has exposed the emptiness of the reassurances from Police, Border Force and Immigration that these freed detainees are being monitored and that the community is safe.

Yawari was wearing an ankle bracelet when the alleged attack on the woman occurred.

The extent to which the authorities were blindsided by the High Court ruling – and left flat-footed by the Albanese Government’s lack of a Plan B – has also become a problem for the Malinauskas Labor government.

With six of the 125 freed detainees now in SA – one of them Yawari who is now back behind bars – the short-staffed SA Police Service is scrambling to provide cover amid a six-year spike in its attrition rates to 5.4 per cent and a shortfall of 185 officers.

The Weekend Australian understands that the SA government has expressed concerns to the federal government over the lack of operational support for the monitoring process by the AFP.

Police Minister Joe Szakacs was also wrong-footed by the ­Yawari case when he offered a cast-iron guarantee that South Australians had nothing to fear from the freed detainees the day before Yawari’s alleged attack ­became public.

Senior SAPOL officers and the Police Minister were attending Sergeant Doig’s funeral last Monday when they first heard news of the incident involving Yawari, which helped explain the confusion in terms of relaying information to the public about what had transpired. The state opposition accused the government of lacking transparency, with police spokesman Sam Telfer saying the public needs more information about where and how the freed detainees are being housed.

“The spurious suggestion by the Liberals that federal detainees have been ‘let loose’ in SA is not only knowingly and dangerously wrong, but evidence they are taking their political instructions from Peter Dutton,” Szakacs said prior to news of Yawari’s alleged attack being known.

“SAPOL will respond rapidly and diligently to any calls or safety concerns.”

The frustrations of SA Police have been heightened by the timing of the release of the detainees, coming as the force reels from the murder of Brevit Sergeant Jason Doig and the death of the youngest son of SA Police Commissioner Charlie Stevens in the past three weeks.

“Joe Szakacs must reassure South Australians that they are safe from these criminals and must explain why he withheld such important safety information from the public,” Telfer said.

In terms of transparency, it is the Immigration Department and Border Force which deserve the most attention after another troubling incident in Adelaide involving an illegal non-citizen.

Unrelated to the cases of the freed detainees, there was another incident involving a non-citizen this week who busted out of a hotel in the affluent suburb of North Adelaide – with local residents unaware until that point the Quality Inn on O’Connell St was secretly being used to house “high-risk immigrants”.

They included a 25-year-old Indian man, believed to be facing deportation for unspecified crimes, who smashed a window at the Quality Inn on Tuesday afternoon and fled.

He then entered Blackfriars Priory School, forcing the school into lockdown with teachers locking their students in their classrooms just before the school day was set to end at 3.05pm.

Neither SAPOL nor Australian Border Force officers were able to locate the man. ABF refused to say what crimes the man had committed to warrant his deportation, or provide any further information about the case.