20 years jail for killing drug dealer

A [man] has been sentenced to at least 20 years in jail for bashing [a] drug dealer to death and hanging the man to make it look like suicide.

The body of Gary Kirk Beaumont, 33, was found in the boot of his car in the car park of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide in June last year.

He had been repeatedly bashed and kicked, stabbed and then hanged by Steven James Newton, 49.

The victim had driven to Newton's house at Birkenhead earlier in the evening to sell him methamphetamines.

Justice Michael David said it was unclear how the fight started.

Newton and his de facto partner, Rebecca Lee Bone, 39, drove around with the body for hours, before dumping the car at the hospital.

Mr Beaumont's girlfriend wept in the courtroom as Newton was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole term of 20 years.

Bone was given a two-year jail sentence, with a 15-month non-parole term.

Three sentenced over cocaine bust

IT WAS a complex ploy but police discovered it by accident.

They were investigating another man, when a recorded phone call led to a plan by three eastern suburbs men to conspire with others to import a large amount of cocaine.

The plan, hatched in phone calls and during meetings between co-conspirators in Spain, Canada and at the Clovelly Surf Life Saving Club, was to import the drugs hidden in a truck that was being shipped from Panama to Sydney on a container ship.

At Patrick's dock at Darling Harbour, dock workers known to one or more of the conspirators were to offload the truck and its contents, and take the drugs out of the terminal.

But neither the Illinois-registered truck, nor its expected 30-kilogram illegal cargo, ever made it to Australia.

Yesterday - more than six years after the conspiracy started and after two lengthy trials - the three men were sentenced for their roles.

The first trial, which ended after five months in a hung verdict, attracted attention when one of the jurors told the judge they had lost their job because of the length of the trial.

The Crime Commission was investigating allegations of jury irregularities during this trial.

After a second lengthy and costly trial the three - the former South Sydney footballer Ricky James Montgomery, the former hotelier Bradley James Evans and a Maroubra man, Hayden Rodgers - were found guilty.

Since then, their lawyers have raised concerns over the role of the then Crime Commission investigator Mark Standen, who faces drug charges, and his link with Steven James, the key Crown witness against them.

James, who had taken a leading role in the import plan, had misled the court at his own sentencing hearing and successfully minimised his role, Judge Peter Zahra found yesterday. He found he could not trust James's testimony unless it was corroborated and found Evans and Rodgers were not as involved in the conspiracy as Montgomery.

All three would face a difficult time in prison because of the effect on their families, and various physical and psychological ailments, Judge Zahra ruled.

Montgomery, who had a record, was sentenced to a minimum of nearly 11 years. Evans received a minimum prison term of seven years, and Rodgers was given a minimum six-year prison sentence.

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Push for clear line on death penalty

PRESSURE is mounting on the Rudd Government from the Labor back bench to adopt a tougher stand against the death penalty.

With three Australians on death row in Indonesia - including the 22-year-old convicted drug mule Scott Rush - a push is on for the Government to voice more publicly throughout the region its position as an abolitionist country.

The NSW MP Chris Hayes has lodged a notice of motion in Parliament calling on the Government to take a number of steps, including passing laws making it illegal for states and territories to reintroduce the death penalty. The current legal position means states and territories could reintroduce it, should they wish.

This would incorporate Australia's obligations under the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aimed at the abolition of the death penalty, into domestic legislation.

Such a move, advocates believe, would send a clearer message internationally on Australia's position, and strengthen its arguments for Australians on death row overseas to be spared.

The notice of motion also calls on the Government to lobby the Indonesian Government "as and whenever appropriate" to grant clemency to the three Australian Bali Nine members on death row.

It also asks Indonesia to "understand Australia's principled position in relation to the imposition of the death penalty".

"Abhorrence of the death penalty is a fundamental value in Australian society and there is bipartisan opposition to the death penalty within the Australian Parliament," it says.

The notice of motion will be debated in Parliament in the next sitting period, in a fortnight.

The Victorian Labor MP Mark Dreyfus, who is a QC, will also argue in support of the motion.

Mr Dreyfus told the Herald yesterday "all my adult life I've been opposed to the death penalty. We have abolished the death penalty in Australia and we need to work for the abolition of the death penalty every where in the world."

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, while opposition leader, dismayed civil libertarians and supporters of Australians on death row when he censured his now-Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, for arguing for a more principled approach to the death penalty, one that opposed executions for citizens regardless of nationality or crime.

It is believed by those backing a stronger approach that it would clarify the position of Australian law enforcement agencies who co-operate in transnational investigations into crimes which attract the death penalty overseas. This follows criticism of the Australian Federal Police who were involved in the arrests of the Bali Nine.

Colin McDonald, the barrister for Rush, said: "It will then become a relevant legal consideration for the AFP in the conveyance of information that might predictably lead to the imposition of the death penalty on Australian citizens."

Two other Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran of the Bali Nine, are on death row. The three men can seek a judicial review of their death sentences, and appeal to the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for clemency.

Mr McDonald says Mr Hayes's notice of motion is "historically significant". Mr Hayes is the member for Werriwa. It was under the prime ministership of another member for Werriwa - Gough Whitlam - that Australia abolished the death penalty for federal offences, in 1973.

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Plea to spare drug traffickers

THE Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, has urged Vietnam to spare two Australians convicted of drug trafficking from execution by firing squad.

Mr Smith said during a visit that he was assured by the Vietnamese Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, that the Government was giving "careful and proper" consideration to appeals for clemency made by the two.

Both are Australian citizens of Vietnamese origin, sentenced to die for drug trafficking.

"I've made the point that Australia supports those bids of clemency," Mr Smith said.

The names of the two Australians were not available.

At least four Vietnamese-Australians convicted of drug trafficking have had their death sentences commuted after the Australian Government asked that they not be executed.

Vietnam has not executed any Australians for drug offences.

Several Australians of Vietnamese origin have been arrested in recent months for suspected drug trafficking, including three accused of trying to smuggle heroin onto planes.

Mr Smith said police forces from the countries could work together to help prevent crimes.

"I've made the point to the Prime Minister that Australia does not condone narcotic offences - on the contrary, we regard these as very serious," Mr Smith said.

He had finished a two-day visit to Vietnam.

Vietnam has some of the world's toughest drug laws.

How elite agents went off the rails

THEY were the untouchables, an elite band of Australian Federal Police, some of whom insiders say were no better than "gangsters with police badges".

Their headquarters were Redfern's landmark TNT twin towers, where extramarital conquests and drunken "happy hour" parties were common.

It was the 1980s and, as one former officer of the 35-strong AFP Sydney drug investigation unit recalls, it was like "living inside a grubby episode of Miami Vice".

Memories of the heady days of the twin tower crew have been revived because of the charges laid against one of the squad's alumni, senior NSW Crime Commission investigator Mark Standen.

Following his arrest on drug charges this month, insiders have told said some members of the unit were compromised and beyond control.

Michael Anthony Wallace - convicted of stealing $20 million worth of seized heroin in 1990 and then of murdering girlfriend Zoe Zou and dumping her body in the Blue Mountains in 2006 - was one.

Another was Allan Gregory McLean, sentenced to 16 years' jail for helping import millions in heroin from India hidden inside a consignment of soccer balls in 1988.

Others were named at the NSW Wood Royal Commission over filching $200,000 from a Sydney cocaine dealer in 1983.

But with authorities infatuated with rogue NSW cop Roger Rogerson, some of the officers went bad and started trafficking drugs, taking bribes and ripping off crooks.

Ensconced on the lower floors of the TNT block, the unit was run for a time by chief inspector Cliff Foster, who committed suicide after a battle with depression in 2001.

It can now be revealed he had been under investigation for supplying heroin and was linked to an organised crime syndicate shipping huge amounts of hashish into Australia from New Zealand.

In the days after charges were laid against Standen, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty was forced to deny claims that he and Standen worked side by side at Redfern and were once daily jogging partners.

Standen, who left the AFP to join the Crime Commission in 1996, is now accused of trying to smuggle in by sea enough pseudoephedrine to make $120 million worth of ice. He is due to face court again on August 6.

Mr Keelty said he and Standen had only ever been stationed together at the AFP's Sydney city headquarters in Goulburn Street.

They "might have been involved in some of the same operations" but were not close.

Mr Keelty also said he was unaware Standen had admitted to the 1982 Stewart Royal Commission that he once flushed 18 foils of cannabis down a toilet instead of declaring it as evidence.

Former NSW detective turned University of Western Sydney academic Michael Kennedy said another member of the unit was allowed to take up a government job after admitting to stealing a kilogram of seized heroin displayed at a media conference.

Another detective resigned after being confronted with allegations he was using and dealing cocaine. He eventually went to work for standover man Tim Bristow, who died in 2003.

One-time head of AFP internal affairs Ray Cooper says security at the TNT offices was a disgrace.

"Operational details were being leaked to the crims," Mr Cooper said. "As a result, I warned the hierarchy that we needed to keep an eye out."

Mr Cooper said his investigation into the Foster allegations was taken from him and deliberately derailed to avoid a public scandal.

He was denied permission to use phone taps and several witnesses against Foster were kidnapped and threatened by other corrupt federal detectives.

Wayne Sievers, who worked at the Redfern towers between 1983 and 1988, likened the experience to "living inside a grubby episode of Miami Vice".

"You were looking at a group, some of whom were simply cowboys with huge egos, who were allowed to drive around town in fast cars with guns, doing whatever they wanted."

Mr Sievers said the same day he reported being offered payola by a more senior officer he was transferred to non-operational duties.

Following a raft of AFP corruption claims at the Wood Royal Commission, a federal inquiry chaired by Sydney barrister Ian Harrison was set up in 1996-97.

Mr Cooper gave evidence but has since criticised the proceedings.

No public hearings were held and all findings were classified. Dr Kennedy and Mr Sievers also testified but believe little was achieved.

All three have called for the inquiry report to be opened.

Last week, NSW Supreme Court judge Harrison said it would be inappropriate for him to comment.

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