The man a judge labelled ‘a danger to the community’

Following his release from detention, Afghani refugee Aliyawar Yawari said he had been locked up for ‘fighting’. The truth was much more alarming. Yawari has since been arrested.

Detainee Aliyawar Yawari outside the Perth City Motel Thornlie following his release. He has since been arrested.

Barely three weeks ago, Aliyawar Yawari was standing outside a modest motel on Perth’s eastern fringe, smiling for the camera as he celebrated his sudden new-found freedom.

Through broken English, the Afghani refugee – who had fled his homeland for Australia via Pakistan after his father and brother were killed by the Taliban – spoke of his desire to finally get back to work. He pulled out his false teeth, and produced from his wallet an old passport photo from his younger days.

Asked about what he had done to warrant being thrown into immigration detention indefinitely, he was equivocal; he would only say that there had been some issues to do with “fighting”.

Rather than expand on the crimes that had prompted authorities to try to have him deported, Yawari was more interested in talking about his time spent inside Western Australia’s Yongah Hill detention facility and the toll it had taken on him physically.

He spoke of the physical ailments he had developed during his time in detention, and his need for a walking stick given his issues with his legs.

Afterwards, however, a quick Google search shed far more light on his backstory.

The “fighting” Yawari had described was, in fact, multiple attacks and indecent assaults on several elderly women in South Australia.

His offending was so severe that in 2016 District Court judge Paul Cuthbertson described him as a “danger to the Australian community”.

Yawari was found to have attacked three women in the space of 14 months in and around Bordertown in South Australia, where he was working at a local abattoir.

All three cases had similarities. In the first, he punched his victim repeatedly in the face before having sex with her. He was convicted of assault but acquitted of rape at trial, ultimately receiving a suspended sentence.

Yawari following his release.

The crime, Justice Cuthbertson said at the time, had taken a lasting toll on his victim.

“She says that she was once a free and easy person, accepting most people and cultures, but is now somewhat less trusting of others, especially men,” he said.

Two months later, according to the Adelaide Advertiser, Yawari attacked a 64-year-old woman in her home, indecently assaulting her then hitting her in the neck with a walking stick.

His third offence again involved an incident with a lone elderly woman and had sexual overtones and in both those matters, Yawari smashed windows and kicked doors during the attack.

It prompted Justice Cuthbertson to sentence him to three years and 11 months in prison and, in the six years since serving his term, Yawari has been in immigration detention awaiting a deportation that never came.

Yongah Hill immigration detention centre in Western Australia.

Since his sudden release as part of the first wave of detainees freed following the High Court’s landmark decision last month, Yawari has moved from one modest motel to another. Most recently, he was staying at a three-star motel in Pooraka, in Adelaide’s north.

There, it appears, Yawari allegedly committed the same offence Judge Cuthbertson had feared would be repeated all those years ago, and which Anthony Albanese would have feared since the High Court decision caught out his government.

According to SA police, officers were called to a hotel on Main North Road in Pooraka, Adelaide, at 10pm on Saturday in response to a report a woman had been indecently assaulted by a guest staying at the premises. Yawari has been charged with two counts of indecent assault and been refused police bail.