A former immigration detainee accused of murder after being released last month had a string of violent convictions in Canberra, where the tribunal member who freed him conceded he had "continued to engage in victim blaming".
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As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fields ongoing criticism of his government's immigration regime amid the fallout over more than 150 detainees being released, details have emerged of the accused man's violent crime spree in Canberra.
The man identified by the tribunal as DPGF - who The Canberra Times has opted not to name for legal reasons - was born in Africa but has no relatives there and grew up between NSW and the ACT.
In 2020, his humanitarian visa was revoked on the grounds that he did not pass the character test, after being jailed for 18 months in the ACT for choking a woman until she was unconscious.
In 2017, the ACT Magistrates Court had also jailed the man for eight months for assault, making threats to kill and possession of cannabis after he menaced a person with a knife while walking down a street and hit a person with his vehicle.
AAT Deputy President Stephen Boyle's decision to free the man gave significant weight to the man's family connections in Australia, in line with a 2023 direction issued by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles that says such community ties, and time spent in Australia, must be taken into account.
Because of this, Opposition immigration spokesperson Dan Tehan has attacked Mr Giles over the man's release, which comes after an unrelated violent attack on a Perth grandmother by two other former detainees.
Mr Albanese was asked if Mr Giles "should keep his job as Immigration Minister after the alleged murder by an ex-detainee with a serious criminal history".
"I think if you go back and have a look at who appointed the people who made that decision, it wasn't this government," Mr Albanese said, referring to Mr Boyle's appointment by then immigration minister George Brandis in 2017.
The AAT deputy president found that the minister's observation that the man had "in the past sought to minimise his offending and to engage in victim blaming" was a fair one. But he said the man had "come to accept responsibility for his past actions" while in detention, where he had undertaken courses and counselling and started taking psychiatric medication.
ACT Magistrates Court documents provided to the tribunal show that, under cross examination, the man said he could not understand why he attacked the woman when an argument "got physical".
"I was trying to restrain her, and then she's trying to fight back," he said. "I just found myself, you know, holding her down and choking her. I don't understand why, like, I did that". Asked if it was "something to do with the trauma that you've suffered in your past", he said, "I do have a short temper ... It got serious so quick."
According to a document tendered to the AAT, the man allegedly "approached two male victims without any particular reason and said to them words to the effect 'I'm going to come to your house. I'm going to wear a mask. I'm going to shoot you. I'm going to kill you', whilst using his fingers to make the gesture of firing a gun at the victim". He later "pulled a knife and pointed the knife at both victims saying 'mate, I'm going to kill you'."
"One of the victims ... still has anxiety and experiences hypervigilance," it said.