A Pakistani refugee rapist who was freed from immigration detention is on the run after cutting off his electronic monitoring bracelet in Melbourne.
Registered sex offender and convicted armed robber Sajed Ali, 33, who does not speak English and is illiterate in his own language, was last seen in Collingwood on March 5, Victoria Police said.
Ali is described as being approximately 180cm tall, 80 kg, and has an olive complexion with dark hair. He is an amputee last seen with a prosthetic hand with a glove over it, and also had a prosthetic glass eye.
He is known to frequent the Nunawading, Sunshine, Collingwood, Ringwood, St Kilda and Shepparton areas.
Ali is among almost 300 convicted criminal illegal immigrants who were released from detention following the NZYQ High Court ruling in November 2023, the Herald Sun reported.
Labor released the cohort after the court found that “stateless” Rohingya man NZYQ, who was refusing to be deported after serving his sentence for raping a 10-year-old boy, could not be held in indefinite detention.
That group includes murderers, rapists like Ali, paedophiles like NZYQ, drug traffickers, severe domestic violence offenders and kidnappers, a large proportion of whom are now being paid monthly benefits of up to $2,000 cash since they are on bridging visas.
Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the situation was a “complete and utter mess”.
“The government’s failure to be able to keep the community safe is frightening. Law and order is becoming a bigger and bigger issue and this is one of the reasons why,” he said.
“They said that these people were going to be monitored 24 hours and now we have a rapist that is on the loose and hasn’t been seen or heard of for seven days.”
Ali was allowed to come to Australia at age 19 after being injured in a grenade explosion in Pakistan, but soon started using abusing alcohol and illegal drugs and became homeless.
In 2019 he was found unfit to stand trial by a jury on charges of rape and armed robbery against two female prostitutes due to cognitive impairment, but was then found by a second jury at a Special hearing to have committed the offences, and ordered to surrender to immigration detention after being released from jail due to his status as an unlawful non-citizen.
Header image: Left, Sajed Ali. Right, Sajed Ali at Collingwood Railway Station on March 5 (Victoria Police).
