Fed: Immigration bungle led to suspect walking free: Labor

AAP General News (Australia)
04-25-2006
Fed: Immigration bungle led to suspect walking free: Labor

By Kylie Williams

CANBERRA, April 25 AAP - An immigration department bungle caused by incompetent record
keeping had allowed a man wanted over a brutal double murder to walk free, Labor said
today.

But a department spokesman said it was not lawful to fingerprint immigration detainees
at the time and Tuan Dang Nguyen had taken on a new identity which led to him being detained
as an unlawful citizen.

The bungle allowed murder suspect Nguyen to avoid capture for more than two years while
he allegedly lived under a false name.

Nguyen was then wanted for murdering two women, Ba Thi Nguyen, 50, and Khan Le, 27,
in the Victorian town of Robinvale on April 21, 2001.

In September 2003 he was detained in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre as an illegal
immigrant and was released into the community on a temporary protection visa 10 months
later without any police checks.

He was finally arrested at Cabramatta in Sydney's west last Monday and has been extradited
to Melbourne, but The Age today reported police are furious about the bungle.

Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke said the case showed how incompetent the
immigration department's record keeping was and how important it was for it to be improved.

"This adds to the demand for record keeping and ID monitoring to be state of the art
in the department of immigration," he told AAP.

"It should never have been allowed to collapse the way it did.

"The same incompetence of record keeping that caused Australians to be locked up can
now be seen to have caused a wanted man to be released into the community."

But the immigration spokesman said it had no cause at the time to doubt that the man
was who he said he was.

"In September 2003 we did not have the power under the law to compel detainees to give
us fingerprints for identification," he said.

"As far as the department at the time knew he was who he said he was."

The spokesman said the law had changed after the Palmer and Comrie reports last year
into earlier immigration department bungles and detainees could now be made to provide
fingerprints.

He said Nguyen also gave a false name and supplied false identification documents to
the department.

The department now also has a national identification and advice centre where police
databases across the country can be checked.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone yesterday said she was aware of the case and it
was being looked at.

Only last month commonwealth ombudsman Professor John McMillan called on the department
to review its procedures for dealing with cases in which the identity or immigration status
of the person is in question.

AAP klw/jt/nf

KEYWORD: NGUYEN NIGHTLEAD

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