Australia inquiry raises hopes for six jailed over alleged 1981 bomb plot | Courts News | USAEMALL.com

Melbourne, Australia – More than 4 many years after they had been convicted in considered one of Australia’s longest-running legal trials, the proof used to jail six former Yugoslav migrants is being re-examined to find out in the event that they had been victims of a miscarriage of justice.

A uncommon judicial inquiry within the state of New South Wales (NSW) started investigating this month the convictions of six Croatian-Australian males discovered responsible in 1981 of plotting to bomb websites throughout Sydney, Australia’s largest metropolis.

A Supreme Court decide ordered the inquiry on the grounds that there have been “doubts” and “questions” in regards to the proof offered to the trial by cops and a key witness, who Australia’s home spy company suspected might have been an informant for the state intelligence company of the then-Yugoslavia, the Eastern European nation that ultimately broke up in a wave of nationalism in 1991.

“The members of the ‘Croatian Six’ for whom I act have always and steadfastly maintained their innocence,” stated Sebastian De Brennan, one of many legal professionals representing the three males on whose behalf the judicial assessment utility was made: Vjekoslav Brajkovic, Maksimilian Bebic and the late Mile Nekic, who died final 12 months in Croatia.

De Brennan informed Al Jazeera the inquiry was “a vindication for my clients who wanted nothing more than to have their names, and those of the many other Croatian-Australians whose good reputations were tarnished by the case, cleared.”

The inquiry can even look at the circumstances of the three different members of the “Croatian Six”: Anton Zvirotic and brothers Ilija and Joseph Kokotovic.

All six males had been current migrants from Yugoslavia after they had been arrested in Sydney and the NSW city of Lithgow in February 1979.

After a 172-day trial within the NSW Supreme Court, in February 1981, they had been convicted of involvement in a conspiracy to bomb two journey companies, a Serbian group membership, a suburban theatre and Sydney water provide pipes. They had been additionally convicted on fees of possessing explosives and every sentenced to a most of 15 years in jail. They served sentences of 10 years earlier than being launched in 1991.

Multiple authorized appeals and functions for judicial assessment had been unsuccessful however in 2022, after inspecting new data submitted to the NSW Supreme Court, Judge Robertson Wright ordered a judicial inquiry into the convictions.

Judge Wright stated there have been “doubts or questions as to parts of the evidence … and the guilt of the Croatian Six”, together with whether or not a central witness gave “deliberately false” proof within the authentic trial.

The man, generally known as Vico Virkez, informed police that he was a member of the largely anti-communist Croatian-Australian group and concerned within the alleged bombing plot with the convicted males. His confession to Lithgow police in 1979 led to their arrests.

Declassified authorities paperwork title him as Vito Misimovic or Mesimovic, a Bosnian-born migrant who was reported by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) as having hyperlinks to the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney.

Yugoslavia’s eventual break up following the collapse of the then-Soviet Union led to the independence of a number of nations together with Croatia.

ASIO recordsdata describe the “Croatian Six” as belonging to a “Croatian nationalist movement dedicated to overthrowing the Yugoslav government and establishing an independent Croatian state”. In his determination, Judge Wright states there’s a “real possibility that the Yugoslav Intelligence Service used Mr Virkez as an agent provocateur or informer, to cause false information to be given to the NSW Police, and possibly ASIO, as to the existence of a bombing conspiracy involving the Croatian Six, in order to discredit Croatians in Australia”.

Investigative journalist Hamish McDonald, who has written extensively on the “Croatian Six”, expects the declassified data on Virkez’s actions to have a major influence on the inquiry. In 2018, McDonald’s analysis led to the intelligence company recordsdata being declassified and included within the utility for a judicial inquiry.

“The ASIO evidence shows that this information was given very early to the state police but none of it reached the defence counsel or was heard in the court,” McDonald recalled.

“The Crown Counsel assured the court there was not a scintilla of evidence that Virkez was a Yugoslav agent.”

In directing the inquiry, Judge Wright discovered that “the unavailability to the defence at the trial of the information of the type disclosed in the declassified ASIO documents may well have deprived each accused of a chance of acquittal”.

McDonald believes that if any of the surviving cops concerned in arresting the “Croatian Six” seem earlier than the inquiry, they are going to be questioned “about the physical evidence they claim to have found on the premises of the six Croatian Australians and why they did not do certain things that would be routine procedures now, like photographing evidence and fingerprinting. They’d be asked whether they used violence in the interrogation of the arrested men”.

Four of the lads alleged they had been overwhelmed whereas in police custody. Judge Wright stated there have been questions too in regards to the proof offered by NSW Police officers in regards to the confessions attributed to all six males and the invention of explosives linked to them.

“The inquiry will have a wider scope than a trial and examine the convictions in a different way to an appeals court,” defined Associate Professor Mehera San Roque, an knowledgeable in proof legislation on the University of New South Wales.

“It is not bound by the rules of evidence. So, the judge will be able to receive evidence that might otherwise be inadmissible in a trial,” she stated.

At the top of the inquiry, the decide will submit a report back to the chief justice of the Supreme Court and “may refer the matter to the Court of Criminal Appeal for consideration of whether the convictions should be quashed, or the sentence reconsidered”.

“If the convictions are quashed, it is possible to seek compensation,” added San Roque.

‘I was innocent’

The “Croatian Six” and their households have hardly ever spoken publicly in regards to the trial and convictions.

But in his first testimony to the inquiry in early December, Vjekoslav Brajkovic declared: “I was innocent.” He described a transcript of his 1979 police interview as “a complete fabrication”.

“It was like tying up the hands of the men who were arrested behind their backs and telling them to go off and fight the trial,” Brajkovic, now in his 70s, informed the listening to.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 2022, Lydia Peraic, the previous spouse of Joseph Kokotovic, referred to as for an “acknowledgment that wrong has been done”.

“My whole world fell apart,” Peraic informed ABC Radio, describing the  “horrendous impact” of her ex-husband’s incarceration. “It’s not only wrong for Joe. It’s wrong for my daughters and their daughters because it has scarred us. All you want is a ‘sorry’.”

Other kinfolk of the six males share the sentiment, says Doris Bozin, a Canberra-based lawyer who has been advocating for the “Croatian Six” because the Nineties.

“Many of the families feel let down, disillusioned and bitter towards Australian institutions,” she stated.

“Some are worried about repercussions during and after the inquiry on themselves, their families – particularly the children and grandchildren. They’re feeling trauma revisiting that past, those lost years and missed opportunities.”

“Yet some of them still feel a glimmer of hope,” Bozin added.

Bozin describes a way of “apprehension” within the wider Croatian-Australian group “stemming from repeated let-downs and erosion of trust in some Australian institutions”.

“There is a collective hope the inquiry, through its insights and recommendations, will exonerate Australian Croatians from unjust extremist and terrorist labels,” she stated.

Presiding over the inquiry is Judge Robert Allan Hulme. In 1985, he assisted in an inquiry into the convictions – later overturned – of three members of the Ananda Marga non secular sect over a plot to homicide a right-wing political determine.

The public hearings within the “Croatian Six” inquiry are set to proceed in March.

Among these confirmed to present proof is a former senior authorities lawyer who first raised issues about intelligence data on Vico Virkez being withheld from the court docket to the federal lawyer common within the mid-Eighties. A seventh man who was arrested with the “Croatian Six” however didn’t stand trial can be as a consequence of seem however consideration shall be on the surviving convicted males, a few of whom have been ready for many years for his or her likelihood to be heard.

“Their desire is that justice will not only be done, but be seen to be done,” stated lawyer De Brennan. “They, their families, Croatian Australians and the legal fraternity will be watching the inquiry with a keen eye.”