"We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances under which they come."Former Australian PM,John Howard,Sydney,October 2001.
May 07, 2009
People-smuggling baron Ali Cobra seized in action
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent
The Australian
May 07, 2009
ONE of the biggest fish in Indonesia's people-smuggling racket has been netted, after police raided a house in the eastern port city of Makassar.
The 30-year-old - known to asylum seekers the world over as Ali Cobra and described by Indonesian authorities as the "Noordin M.Top" of the trafficking racket, in reference to the regional terror tsar who has eluded capture for years - was seized on Monday night.
Ali Cobra, also operating under the name Labasa Ali, was in the process of organising a trip to Australia for 10 Afghan asylum seekers, some of whom had previously tried to make the perilous trip but had been detained by Indonesian police.
All 10 Afghan men, as well as the alleged people-smuggler, were captured in the swoop. News of the arrest comes as Australia finds itself confronting a new wave of boat arrivals.
On Tuesday, Border Protection Command intercepted a boat carrying 50 asylum seekers - the 11th such vessel to be detected this year. And late on Tuesday night, four asylum seekers found on a beach on Deliverance Island in the Torres Strait arrived at Christmas Island. The men - two Afghans, a Sri Lanklan and an Indian - were transported on a commercial flight from Perth.
Ali Cobra has established a dominant hold over the trade in recent years; according to one senior Indonesian immigration official who spoke on condition of not being identified, "in almost every case in recent times he is mentioned".
This includes an ill-fated attempt in January by a group of 18 Afghans, Pakistanis and Burmese to sail in a small fishing boat from Rote Island, west of Timor, to Ashmore Reef. Nine of those on board, including a nine-year-old boy, died when the boat sank.
One of the 10 Afghans arrested this week used a hidden mobile phone to tell The Australian from his immigration detention cell - having been returned there after Monday night's raid - that it was "absolutely" the Rudd Government's relaxed policy on boatpeople that was driving the surge in arrivals by sea.
The Australian Labor Party's "new best friends"
arrive on Australia's shores 4 May 2009, the eleventh boat load
to arrive since November 2008
"Absolutely. We, like everybody who tries to go, we know the detention regulations have been lifted since the fall of John Howard," said Kabul man Gulistan Ali, 32.
"We know the new Government has condemned the actions of the previous one, and has made the policies much easier for asylum seekers. We know this."
Mr Ali said he and two fellow Afghans escaped from the Indonesian detention centre about a week ago by scaling a 20m wall, leaping to the ground, hiding in dense jungle for two days and then walking 60km to Makassar, where they were contacted by phone and given an address to meet their handler.
Police swooped when the group assembled at the house.
Gulistan Ali and his two fugitive companions had previously tried to make the dangerous sea crossing on February 2, when they were arrested in the southeast Sulawesi port of Bau-Bau, preparing to board a small wooden boat.
All three had been in the detention centre, near Makassar city, since then. Gulistan Ali said the "difficult psychological situation" of being incarcerated in the "brutal conditions" there had triggered his second illegal attempt to reach Australia.
Gulistan Ali said he had paid "around $US9000" ($12,000) in total to people-smugglers since arriving in Indonesia early this year; another of the trio, Ahmad Ghahera, 25, said he paid about $US8000. Both men handed over most of that money on arrival in Jakarta, after flying from Kabul via Kuala Lumpur.
They had obtained visas from the Indonesian embassy in Kabul; there have been claims made of officials there providing the entry documents for up to $US1500. Indonesia's foreign ministry denies that allegation.
Gulistan Ali, who has a wife and two toddlers in Afghanistan, said he knew there was "less than a 50 per cent chance of succeeding, of not drowning" in the attempt to reach Ashmore Reef in Australia's northwestern waters, both in the one planned for this week and that of three months ago.
However, his life, he said, "is already ruined. Either I die - and I'm not concerned if that happens - or I secure a future for my children."
However, Gulistan Ali warned that even a figure as significant as Ali Cobra should not be seen as the end of the trail in the people-smuggling business operating out of Indonesia.
"It's a very organised mafia. But the organiser of it absolutely does not come before the people. They stay behind the curtain.
"I understand that people are very often cheated. They hand over their money and then the smugglers just report them to the authorities, to the police."
The majority of the $US9000 he had paid went, he claimed, to a smuggler "who has not been arrested". Also arrested this week in Jakarta was alleged people-smuggler Sajjad Hussein, thought to have been responsible for organising a boatload of asylum seekers intercepted in Australian waters on April 29.
"Absolutely. We, like everybody who tries to go, we know the detention regulations have been lifted since the fall of John Howard," said Kabul man Gulistan Ali, 32.
"We know the new Government has condemned the actions of the previous one, and has made the policies much easier for asylum seekers. We know this."
Why would the Australian Labor Party,led by PM Kevin Rudd,want to flood Australia with Middle Eastern Muslim "refugees" ? they are a group of people who, have proven since the day of the first arrivals en mass from Lebanon during the 1970's under the patronage of the Whitlam Labor Government, that they are totally incompatible with Australian and Western democratic Judeo Christian values.
These people have shown themselves to be the worst immigrants ever to enter our great nation over the last 200 years.
No other group of immigrants have done more to destroy the social fabric of Australian society than Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants,not only in Australia but in every western democracy they are permitted to enter.No other group in Australian society is so reviled and despised, if they were not so backward,barbaric and primitive they would be funny.
Why Mr Rudd why are you so fixated on flooding Australia with such people?
Areas of south western Sydney, that were once suburbs habitat ed by hard working Australians from various ethnic backgrounds are now known as "Sydney's occupied Territories " over run by Middle Eastern crime gangs and thousands of unemployed parasites dressed in night shirts and Burkah's swanning around coffee shops, trading in illicit contraband and collecting social security to supplement their cash only income derived from drugs importation,robbery,car re birthing and common assault.
Oh I almost forgot when they are not doing that they are lecturing at the local Mosque on pious Islam and how to best overthrow Australian society, shoot and stab our sons ("skips") and gang rape and bash our daughters and wives ("Aussie Pigs and Sluts")
"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus’s
Australian PM Kevin Rudd (l), pictured here with his doppelganger
and Minister for Climate Change,Comrade Penny Wong.
Pictures of "refugees" from Winds of Jihad
lol ur dumb
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