A senior bikie club member has been released from prison after serving 10 months in custody for refusing to answer questions at an Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission coercive hearing.
Federal Court Justice Richard White has ordered the man, an officer-bearer in a well-known OMC, be freed after he purged his contempt by finally answering the six questions he refused to respond to last October.
The six questions the man refused to answer concern the ownership of six mobile phones and BlackBerry devices found during a search of his northern suburbs house by ACIC officers. Last October, The Advertiser revealed the bikie, who cannot be identified because of secrecy provisions that surround the coercive hearings, has been a major player in the illicit drug industry in SA for decades.
He has served several lengthy prison terms for drug offences — the latest a six-year stint after his 2004 conviction for trafficking. The man and several of his close associates have been targets in a continuing ACIC intelligence operation against outlaw motorcycle club members involved in drug-linked criminal activity.
As part of the operation, the ACIC has used the coercive hearings, at which those summonsed are compelled to answer questions posed by an examiner, or else they are in contempt. On July 8, the bikie launched court action seeking an order that his sentence of imprisonment be converted from “one of indefinite duration to a finite term’’.
While a date for that hearing had been set for August 8, the Federal Court was informed the bikie had appeared before the ACIC on July 25 and had purged his contempts. The court was informed the bikie had answered “each of the six questions he previously refused to answer and that he had also answered other questions asked of him “to the satisfaction’’ of the ACIC.
In making an order for the release of the bikie, Justice White said the sentence was intended predominantly “to provide a means of coercion’’ to comply with lawful obligations. He acknowledged the bikie had been held in “segregation and protection units or in isolation units’’ for most of the past 10 months since he ordered his incarceration.
“I accept that being held in those circumstances would have added to the burden of the imprisonment which the respondent has undergone, and I take into account as an additional matter that, throughout the period during which the respondent has been serving the sentence of imprisonment, he has not known its end point,’’ he said. “The punitive and deterrent purposes of the sentence in this case have also been satisfied. That is so with respect to both specific and general deterrence.’’
Justice White ordered the man pay the costs the ACIC incurred as a result of the court actions arising from his contempt in October last year.
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Source: The West Australian