Wife killer freed under NZYQ fights Labor’s Nauru deportation bid

A murderer who strangled his wife and disposed of her body in acid is fighting Tony Burke’s bid to deport him to Nauru, in a legal challenge to Labor’s plan to send NZYQ detainees to a third country.

Bondi woman Lana (Svetlana) Podgoyetsky (right) was killed by her husband Tony Kellisar (left), who disposed of her body in acid.

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A murderer who strangled his wife and disposed of her body in hydrochloric acid is fighting Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke’s bid to deport him to Nauru, in a legal challenge to Labor’s plan to send NZYQ detainees to a third country.

The Australian can reveal Tony Kellisar, who murdered his wife Svetlana Podgoyetsky in 1997, won a reprieve in the Federal Court on Sunday, the day before Labor had planned to deport him and two violent offenders to the Pacific nation under a paid agreement.

The Iranian served 22 years in prison for the “calculated and premeditated murder”, but was among the 150 non-citizens released from immigration detention when the High Court handed down its NZYQ ruling indefinite detention was unlawful in November 2023.

Kellisar’s criminal history places him among the most serious offenders freed under the landmark ruling, with the Albanese government moving to deport him under the first deal it struck with a third-party country under immigration laws it passed late last year.

There now remain 13 other murderers and attempted murderers among the 291 dangerous non-citizens released after the NZYQ decision who have not been slated for removal, as well as 131 violent criminals, 90 sex offenders, 21 drug offenders and 19 domestic violence perpetrators.

Podgoyetsky and Kellisaron on their wedding day. Picture: Supplied

Mr Burke revealed earlier this month that three detainees, a murderer and two violent offenders, would be sent to Nauru under an agreement with the island nation of fewer than 13,000 people. He also flagged there was little prospect of the government’s preventive detention laws being used to put NZYQ detainees back behind bars.

Amid mounting political pressure to tackle the immigration crisis, Mr Burke has repeatedly stated he expected the removal powers to be challenged in the courts but he was confident the laws would hold up.

“These individuals didn’t just commit crimes, they have breached the trust that Australia places in anyone who is given a visa,” Mr Burke told The Australian.

“I don’t want them in Australia at all.”

After arriving in Australia in 1990 as a refugee, Kellisar’s visa was cancelled on character grounds in 2015 and he was transferred to immigration detention on the completion of his sentence.

Kellisar killed Ms Podgoyetsky in Melbourne in November 1997 in the “most horrific circumstances”, before driving her body back to Sydney where he tried to dispose of it in a wheelie bin using hydrochloric acid.

Tony Kellisar arriving at the Supreme Court in 1999.

Andrew Katz, who married Ms Podgoyetsky’s sister, told The Australian the push to send Kellisar to Nauru was a “cop out, but it’s better than nothing”. Mr Katz, who raised Ms Podgoyetsky’s daughters after their mothers’ death, said he would prefer Kellisar be returned to Iran.

“There’s nothing to stop some other left wing politician saying, ‘oh, you know, it’s cruel and unusual punishment having them on Nauru, we’ll bring them back to Australia’,” Mr Katz said.

“We don’t want that. The family has had enough of Kellisar and his ilk.”

Kellisar killed Ms Podgoyetsky in Melbourne in November 1997 in the “most horrific circumstances”, before driving her body back to Sydney where he tried to dispose of it in a wheelie bin using hydrochloric acid.

He took his fight against the cancellation of his visa to the now dissolved Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Federal Court, but was unsuccessful in overturning the decision.

In his latest court action, The Australian understands Kellisar will take the challenging legal route of arguing against the government’s third country removal powers, focusing on the procedural fairness of cancelling his bridging visa and sending him to Nauru.

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said Kellisar was “exactly the kind of former detainee who should have been locked up under the preventive detention powers”.

“If he wins his case against the commonwealth the Albanese government must have a back up plan to protect the community,” he said.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan called on Mr Burke to “come clean” to the Australian people on the cases of the three men, accusing his counterpart for being focused on citizenship ceremonies, which have been criticised as attempts to win votes.

“Instead of conducting mass citizenship ceremonies in which he is deciding who should be invited and who shouldn’t be, Tony Burke should be concentrating on his number one priority and keeping the Australian community safe,” he said.

All three of the men slated for removal to Nauru on Monday have filed court challenges, based on entirely separate legal grounds, and remain in immigration detention.

In one of the cases, an Iraqi man convicted over the “aggravated detaining of a person for advantage” in June 2022 will argue in the High Court that the decision to cancel his protection visa was unlawful and his deportation halted.

Kellisar, who is now in his 50s and is understood to have serious respiratory issues, does not have the same legal avenue available as he has already lost appeals to his visa cancellation decision.