An Iraqi refugee who avoided deportation for rape only to be jailed again over a $188 million drug importation has had the cancellation of his permanent visa overturned by a tribunal.
Imad Yousef Al Qatrani, 57, came to Australia in 1994 after fighting in the Iran-Iraq War for the Iraqi army under the Saddam Hussein regime, which he claims gave him PTSD, but almost immediately began breaking the law.
He quickly racked up criminal convictions for drink driving, assaulting his ex-wife, breaching restraining orders, and intimidating police, and was then jailed for seven years for threatening to kill and “skin” a terrified young woman before violently raping her while his friend, who also raped her, sat outside the room.
But in 2008 a delegate of then-Labor immigration minister Chris Evans decided not to cancel his visa, giving him a formal warning instead, and Al Qatrani went on to obtain permanent residency, although he had a citizenship application rejected in 2010.
Al Qatrani was then arrested in 2017 over a plot to smuggle 254kg of cocaine and 103kg of methamphetamine into Australia, and sentenced to 15 years’ jail with a nine-year non-parole period in 2021, and was refused parole in February this year.
After his permanent visa was cancelled following his 2021 conviction Al Qatrani made an application to revoke the cancellation, which was refused in February this year, but last week he successfully reviewed the decision at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Sydney.
ART Senior Member Mark Harrowell overturned the cancellation using Ministerial Direction 110, which has been maintained by immigration minister Tony Burke since 2024, and has resulted in dozens of serious criminals being spared deportation in recent months.
Direction 110 requires the tribunal to take into account community protection, family violence, ties to Australia, the best interests of minor children, community expectations, legal consequences, impediments if removed, and impact on Australian business interests.
This year alone it has been used to restore the visas of an African refugee who sexually assaulted his nine-year-old niece, a Chinese wife-killer, an Ethiopian rapist, an obese homosexual Indian paedophile, an Iranian drug smuggler, a killer Sri Lankan driver, and a Sudanese refugee who killed an Aussie teenager.
Mr Harrowell noted in his decision that Al Qatrani has two minor children aged 9 and 11 with his current wife – a South Korean national who he met in 2009, and an adult son with his first wife, and that he claimed he was a “changed man from the one sentenced to the crime I was convicted of nine years ago”.
He found protection of the community, community expectations, and Al Qatrani’s history of domestic violence were outweighed by nature, strength and duration of the refugee’s ties to Australia, and that cancelling his visa “would have a significant impact on his family and their future”.
Mr Harrowell further found that allowing Al Qatrani to stay in Australia would be in the best interests of his minor children who would be separated from him permanently otherwise, and that he “would “likely suffer adversely in being returned to Iraq by reason of his PTSD” and be exposed to danger if deported.
“In reaching this conclusion, I am very mindful of the earlier decision not to cancel his visa in 2008. The applicant’s decision to engage in further criminal conduct constituted a grave mistake and a personal failure on many levels,” Mr Harrowell wrote in his decision.
“However, my role is not to punish the applicant or, collaterally, his family. It is to make a decision about whether there is another reason why the decision to cancel his Visa should be revoked and, in doing so, take into account Direction 110 as required.”
Header image: Left, Imad Yousef Al Qatrani. Right, some of the seized drugs (supplied).
