An African thug with a long history of violence has walked free from court after being sentenced for assaulting a homosexual man who groped his friend at his Melbourne apartment and stealing his puffer jacket.
Sudanese refugee Ali Sari, 24, was given a sentence of just 80 days’ imprisonment and a 12-month Community Corrections Order last week after pleading guilty to common law assault and theft over the April 2023 attack on the 37-year-old victim.
But the Judge Amanda Chambers took into account 126 days Sari had served in custody on unrelated armed robbery, assault and theft charges in 2024 before they were dropped by the prosecution, and ordered that the 80 days be reckoned as served.
The court heard that the victim, a Mr Neil, flirted with a man named Wol Akot at a gathering at his home in Richmond, but Akot took offence when Mr Neil placed his hand near his penis and threatened Mr Neil with a knife.
The next evening Mr Neil returned home to find three knife-wielding Africans waiting for him. The trio forced him inside his apartment, hit him with a hammer and an electrical cord, punched and kicked him repeatedly, and cut patches out of his dreadlocks, the court heard.
The attackers then called Sari and a man named Peter Madul, who both came inside and punched Mr Neil before Sari left with the victim’s black puffer jacket.
Mr Neil was later hospitalised with a rib cartilage fracture, a fractured hand, a large bruise to his forehead, and other cuts, bruising and bleeding.
Judge Amanda Chambers said in sentencing that Sari’s moral culpability was reduced due to his “mild intellectual disability”, and took into account his early guilty pleas and a PTSD diagnosis from clinical neuropsychologist Dr Laura Anderson in 2020.
“I accept that your impaired mental health would make your time in custody more onerous than that is likely to be experienced by others without a background of trauma,” Judge Chambers said.
“I have regard to the fact that you told Dr Anderson you found your first experience of adult custody ‘terrifying and traumatising’.”
The judge noted that Sari started abusing illegal drugs at age 13, had a “concerning” criminal history dating back to 2017, and served 18 months in youth detention for armed robbery, assault, theft and destroying property.
Then as an adult Sari was convicted of assaulting an emergency worker and assaulting a prison officer, and in 2020 was jailed for a violent crime spree on charges including aggravated home invasion, false imprisonment, theft and assault in company.
Sari, who has an IQ of between 57 and 68 and has been diagnosed with ADHD, is now on the NDIS and receiving music therapy for drug abuse and seeing a neuro-psychotherapist, the judge said.
She ordered that Sari’s CCO be supervised, and that he “engage in drug and mental health treatment and rehabilitation, and other programs to reduce the risk of reoffending”.
Header image: Ali Sari in 2019 (Victoria Police).
