Fifteen years after the lid was lifted on Australia's sanctuary for war criminals, fresh evidence suggests successive Federal governments have done little or nothing to stop them entering the country. Mr Mark Aarons names several alleged war criminals living comfortably in Australia in his latest book, War Criminals Welcome . Some of them live near survivors of the regimes that they are said to have ruthlessly served. Some have been previously exposed, others not. They come from civil wars and other conflicts in the old Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Chile, Cambodia and Soviet-dominated eastern Europe.
War criminals are 'welcome'.
Tragically, history is repeating itself. Typical of government incompetence and disinterest, according to Mr Aarons, was the case of Abdul Qader Miakhel, a former military commander of the Afghan communist secret police and accused of ordering the rounding up, torture and execution of civilians in 1985. In 1989, the Afghan community in Australia told the government that Miakhel's wife had settled here and warned that Miakhel was likely to try to follow under the family reunion scheme. Miakhel arrived in Australia in April 1993 as a political refugee and settled in Sydney's west. Last year, through a family friend, Miakhel said his family had been defamed and that he would be willing to be tried before an Australian court or international forum but not by the present Afghan regime.