Ali Khorram Heydarkhani, 41, pleaded guilty to arranging boatloads of refugees, including the case of an aging craft that lost power and smashed on the rocks off Christmas Island in 2010, killing 50 people, many of them Iranians. An islander with a video camera caught pictures of the boat’s death throes and the dying refugees, giving faces to what had been an anonymous death before.
During sentencing in the West Australian District Court in Perth, Judge Stephen Scott 
told Heydarkhani that he had shown a careless attitude to the lives of asylum-seekers and his primary motivation had been money, placing him in the worst category of offenders.
Judge Scott said Heydarkhani played an “essential role” in organizing five boats to Australia between June 2010 and January last year and had been “an integral part of the people-smuggling business” since 2009. The refugees are generally assembled in Indonesia and brought by boat to Christmas Island, which is the closest piece of Australian territory, although it is far from the Australian mainland. Christmas Island is 2,600 kilometers from the Australian mainland but only 300 kilometers from Indonesia.
Prosecutors described Heydarkhani as a senior figure in the smuggling operation that is based in Indonesia. Judge Scott said the heavy sentence was warranted to send a clear message to others who might try to smuggle refugees in dangerous boats. The judge cited an estimate that 1,000 asylum seekers have downed in Australian waters over the past decade.
Judge Scott said he was not convinced Heydarkhani, a former refugee himself who was granted Australian citizenship in 2004, was genuinely remorseful.
He pointed to the fact that Heydarkhani had organized another boat to travel to Australia in December 2010, despite knowing people had lost their lives on the boat trip he had organized that had crashed off Christmas Island just days earlier.
All the boats he used were described as in a very poor condition, with leaky and rotting hulls, ridden with vermin, and barely working engines.
As a former seaman, Heydarkhani would also have known how unsafe the weather conditions were at that time of the year, the court was told. “You knew there were risks of bad weather,” Justice Scott said. “I am satisfied you did not have concern for any of the passengers on any of these boats and your primary motivation was financial reward.”
The boats either did not have any life jackets or there were too few and in poor condition. Judge Scott said Heydarkhani had told one man who lost his wife and three-month-old child in the Christmas Island tragedy that they would be traveling to Australia on a ship with their own cabins and life jackets for all on board.
In reality, there were only 20 life jackets for the estimated 89 passengers, no emergency equipment and no cabins for the passengers.
Heydarkhani recruited passengers, lied to them about the seaworthiness of the boats, took their passports and mobile phones and an estimated $1.7 million in payment. He is believed to have personally made $10,000 from each boat trip. Authorities seized just under $37,000 from him after he was arrested in Indonesia in January 2011. He was then extradited to Australia for trial.
Heydarkhani was the first person convicted on the new crime of conduct that gives rise “to a danger of death or serious harm” to a passenger. That crime was put in the law with the maximum sentence of 14 years just two years ago. He will spend a minimum of 9½ years in prison before he can seek parole.
