Police thugs in Australia

The assault of an armed robbery suspect by three detectives, which was captured on secret video surveillance, had been a one-off incident totally out of character, their lawyer claimed yesterday. The footage recorded by corruption investigators was shown to the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday following guilty pleas to assault charges from Robert Dabb, Mark Butterfield and Matthew Franc. Defence barrister Paul Holdenson QC said the three had already paid a high price for the assault on May 10, 2006, losing the careers they "lived for and loved". He said both the prosecution and defence would be submitting that the three should not be sent to jail. The hearing was adjourned to March 12.

Mr Holdenson said the suspect was believed to have been responsible for two violent jewellery store robberies in which shots had been fired, and the detectives were eager to locate the gun so that 'it not be used again by someone else". He said Dabb, 36, had suffered depression since resigning and was living on a disability pension. Butterfield, 38, was working as a builder's labourer on a "substantial reduction in income" and Franc, 38, was driving a delivery truck.

Prosecutor Michael Tinney said the suspect was repeatedly assaulted after being arrested by detectives from the now disbanded Armed Offenders Squad. The assault was captured on a camera installed by the Office of Police Integrity, which was investigating complaints against the unit.

The hearing was told that Butterfield threw the suspect off his chair and then assaulted him. Later, after the suspect complained he had not been allowed to make a call, Dabb hit him over the head with a telephone and said "Here's ya f**king phone call", Mr Tinney said.

Report here (Via Australian Politics)






Australia: Two years in jail on "no evidence"!

A young woman acquitted by a Supreme Court judge of plotting a terrorist attack in Sydney with her boyfriend has broken her silence for the first time. A fragile but relieved Jill Courtney, 28, experienced her first day of freedom yesterday after enduring 23 horrific months inside Mulawa women's prison as a maximum-security inmate. As she awaited trial, she lived alongside some of the State's most notorious murderers, including Katherine Knight, who famously skinned her husband before cooking his head in a pot. Ms Courtney said that as a "category five" (maximum security) and "extreme high risk" prisoner, she spent most of her time in segregation.

Ms Courtney, a Muslim convert, and her partner, Hussan Kalache, were charged in March, 2006 over an alleged 2005 plot to detonate a car bomb in Kings Cross. The matter was popularly known as in the media as "the love bomb case".

On Friday, Justice Peter Hidden directed a NSW Supreme Court jury to return not-guilty verdicts against the pair after deciding there was no evidence to support the charges.

"I am innocent and now it has been proven in court and my name has been cleared," Ms Courtney told The Sunday Telegraph at her father's southwest Sydney home yesterday. "(But) I know that people are still going to look at me and think, 'She's a terrorist', because of all the media attention it received. "I don't want to hide -- I have nothing to hide -- but I had a very bad time in jail and it's going to take a long time for me to recover from that experience."

Ms Courtney says her relationship with Kalache is stronger than ever after seven years together. "We have both grown up a lot, both within ourselves and within our faith," she said. Kalache is serving a 17-year sentence at Lithgow jail for murder.

Prosecutors had based their case against the couple on a series of phone conversations between them that were intercepted from inside Lithgow jail. "It was rubbish," Ms Courtney said. "There were never any plans to bomb or blow up anything."

Ms Courtney's father, John, 76, said he suffered terribly during his daughter's incarceration. "I worried all the time," he said. "She went through hell in that place. People tell us we should try and get compensation but we're beyond that. We just want to get on with our lives."

Report here



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