He was 13 years old when Australia locked him in an adult prison for people smuggling

After three years of tireless campaigning from advocates and the media, Ali Jasmin has been released, but his story is not unique. As an inquiry into his case - and 23 others like it - begins, Natalie O'Brien examines the case that became a catalyst.

It was obvious to everyone who met him that Ali Jasmin was just a boy.

Fresh-faced, he spoke like a child and a doctor who examined him confirmed he was prepubescent.

Even the Department of Immigration official who interviewed him not long after he was arrested on people-smuggling charges judged him to be about 14 years old.

Despite that, the Australian Federal Police refused to believe these assessments. Relying on a widely discredited wrist X-ray test, the police said he was 19 years old and charged him as an adult for crewing an asylum-seeker boat into Australian waters. Jasmin was kept on remand with sex offenders and paedophiles in the protected section of Perth's Hakea Prison, advocates say.

Then, when he was convicted, he was sent to serve his five-year sentence in Western Australia's maximum-security prison in Albany, a five-hour drive south-east of Perth.

''Out of sight, out of mind,'' one of the boy's supporters claims.


The island of Flores, where Ali Jasmin lived.
But now, after almost three years in some of that state's toughest jails, the frightened child, once so scared he hid from the other prisoners, has blossomed into a confident, caring adolescent who looks after the other Indonesian prisoners jailed with him, particularly the elderly.

''They have done everything to me now; there is nothing left to be scared of,'' Jasmin told one of his advocates about his life in jail.

Documents that have surfaced verifying his birth date show he was arrested at the age of 13, jailed at 14 and now released at 16. Jasmin's life will never be the same.


Documents verifying the 1996 birthdate of Ali Jasmin.
The innocent boy who left school to earn a living fishing to support his mother and sisters after the death of his father is now fluent in English and the ways of the Western world. Friends say his maturity and language skills are a result of exceptional prison staff who tried to take care of him.

From clinging to a fence, pale and petrified, as one jail insider first saw him, Jasmin has grown up physically and mentally. He sat on the prison committee at Albany jail representing the other Indonesian prisoners - interpreting for them if they couldn't speak English - and he worked in the jail's reception centre, helping new prisoners settle in.

The jail on Western Australia's south coast is a world away from his beginnings in Indonesia.


A boat similar to the one on which Ali Jasmin was a crew member. Photo: Sharon Tisdale
According to unearthed documents - a birth certificate, a family register, a school record and a letter from the chief of the village - that have been sent to Australia, Jasmin was born in 1996 in the seaside village of Balaurang, in a picturesque corner of the island of Flores.

He lived with his family in a humble cottage and went to school until he was about 12 years old.

His story, as related by his family and advocates, is that he was lured to join a fishing boat by the ''uncle'' of a neighbour. He jumped at the chance to earn some more money to support the family and joined the boat. He didn't know the true reason for the journey.


Ali Jasmin today. Photo: The Project, Channel Ten
It was December 2009 and he found himself on a boat with 55 Afghan people. According to sentencing documents from the West Australian District Court, six or seven Indonesian crew members were initially on the boat, later named SIEV 86, but they jumped ship on the Indonesian island of Rote, leaving Jasmin and the others to be picked up by the Royal Australian Navy.

The boat was lucky to have been found when it was. The court was told the vessel's propulsion, generators and pumping systems were not working.

''There was floodwater up to a metre high and there were obvious leaks in the hull,'' transcripts of court proceedings show. ''On the last night at sea, the engine broke down and the crew could not fix it. The passengers feared they would sink … The water was covering all of the lower deck areas and the passengers were up to their knees in water whilst baling it out.''

Jasmin was one of four crew who were arrested and taken to Perth. In an age-determination hearing in the District Court, he was deemed to be at least 19 years old.

The federal government has stated it has a policy of not prosecuting Indonesian boat crew found to be children. If there is any doubt about their age, they are to be sent home.

But only recently, during an Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry into the treatment of children suspected of people-smuggling offences, has it emerged that the federal police had received a letter from the Indonesian National Police in 2010, confirming that a birth certificate and other documents showing Jasmin was under age were authentic and they were received before the court age-determination hearing. The AFP did not believe their Indonesian counterparts.

A federal police spokeswoman confirmed officers received a letter in October 2010 from the Indonesian National Police, which included a ''legalised copy'' of a birth certificate in the name of Ali Jasmin.

''However, the AFP was unable to determine its veracity,'' the spokeswoman said in a statement.

The documents were also given to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions but were never given to the District Court judge, Richard Keen, who determined that Jasmin was older than 18. The Australian government also didn't believe officials from the Indonesian Consulate in Perth when they stepped in to provide a birth certificate for Jasmin.

Then the office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions wrote to Jasmin's lawyer, saying they did not believe the Indonesian government officials about the birth certificate: ''In respect of the birth certificate we have received from DIAC, which purports to relate to your client, whilst it is admitted that the birth certificate was provided by the Indonesian Consulate, it is denied that the document was created prior to the offence being committed. The prosecution also disputes that the birth certificate is admissible in its present form without calling proper … evidence establishing what it is in the circumstances as to how it came into being. I request that you please advise whether you will be adducing any evidence at the age-determination hearing other than the birth certificate.''

Given that no documents were given to the court, Jasmin had to speak for himself and he told the court in December 2010 that he was 14. But later the same day he told the court he was born in 1990, then he clarified it to 1996. He later said the federal police had told him he was born in 1990.

So Judge Keen sentenced Jasmin to the minimum five-year mandatory jail term for people smuggling - with a minimum three-year non-parole period - saying that even though he had determined he was over 18, ''I accept whatever your age may be, you are still very young''.

But subsequent investigations by the Australian media, not Australian officials, have uncovered evidence that supports the claim that Jasmin was 13 when he was arrested.

A Channel Ten television crew travelled to his home in Balaurang and met his family and the village chiefs, who told them they were the first people to come asking about his age since he left.

Jasmin's mother, Aniza, told them she had heard from him frequently via phone and mail but said she had not received - until recently - any communication from any authority or lawyer asking her his age.

Ali Jasmin's case, and 23 others like his, will now be the subject of a parliamentary inquiry into whether Indonesian children have been wrongly held in adult jails throughout the country.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young received parliamentary backing for the inquiry, which began on May 10 and will examine how the authorities came to incarcerate Indonesian children in adult prisons.

A spokeswoman for Legal Aid in Western Australia says it has made representations to the federal Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, who on Thursday said three Indonesians convicted of people-smuggling, and who claim they were minors at the time of their interception, will be released from prison and returned to Indonesia following a review of their case.

''Further information has raised sufficient doubt that these three individuals may have been minors at the time of the offence, which warrants granting them early release on licence,'' Roxon said.

''This is not a pardon. These three individuals crewed people-smuggling vessels that came to Australia, all three pleaded guilty to that, and they were convicted of that offence.

''This is a decision to give these three individuals the benefit of the doubt about their age when intercepted, based on further information now available.''

The chairman of the Indonesia Institute in Western Australia, Ross Taylor, who has campaigned tirelessly to get Jasmin and other boys like him released from jail, says the government has been ''battered'' into taking action.

''We have no doubt that without the support of the media, and pressure from Indonesian government officials in Australia, these boys would still be facing extended terms of imprisonment here in Australia,'' Taylor says.

A few days ago, Aniza received a message asking her to attend the local government offices - a six-hour journey from her home - to sign documents so Jasmin could be released. But Aniza is so poor that she didn't have the money to travel there. Friends had to give her the fare.

She says Jasmin had told her in a phone call that he was no longer

we should have returned him so his family could sell him once again to the people smugglers..

I read where we are now getting crews returning for as much as a 3rd time.

cods wrote on May 20^th, 2012 at 7:36am:




He was offered money for a job ... money to use for basics for the family.

You heartless thing.

Sir Spot of Borg wrote on May 20^th, 2012 at 8:30am:




Comes across as the Gillard government using a 13 year old as a signal back to Indonesia, that they are so tough they will pick on children. Hoping this will be picked up by Indonesian media.

You had your chance to stand up and be counted when Aboriginal People were under attack by the Right in Queensland.

You sided with the Right


You are a sell out and over compensating now fools no one except yourself rightey whitey.


Now cut your crap and stop highjacking threads.

corporate_whitey wrote on May 20^th, 2012 at 8:59am:


What has this got to do with locking up an adolescent child in the bighouse.

So where was he released? Was he sent back to indonesia? Was he allowed to stay here? Why are we not told that part of the story? They prolly got rid of him fast i expect.

SOB