“Kicking him out fails the pub test: it’s not right, it’s un-Australian,” lawyer Paul McGirr says of his client Darko Desic. “Dougie” – as the fugitive, turned handyman, turned Sydney local identity is known – has now applied for a visa so he can stay in Australia, and live freely, when he is released from prison later this month.
Desic, 65, made global headlines last year when he handed himself into New South Wales police after 29 years at large, telling officers at the Dee Why station: “I believe you’ve been looking for me.”
Desic had escaped from Grafton prison in 1992, with a little over a year and a half left to serve on a 44-month sentence for cultivating cannabis, because he feared being deported to Yugoslavia and conscripted into the Yugoslav army, then in the midst of a brutal civil war.
In the nearly three decades since his escape, Desic became something of an identity on Sydney’s northern beaches, building a life as an odd-jobbing tradesman, labourer and much-loved member of the beaches community.
But when Covid shut down his informal work and the house he was living in was sold, Desic was left homeless, sleeping in sand dunes. He turned himself in essentially to secure a roof over his head in prison.
Magistrate Jennifer Atkinson sentenced Desic to serve the remaining 19 months of his sentence as well as an additional two months for escaping.
With his sentence set to expire on 28 December, he faces the bizarre prospect of potential removal to a country that no longer exists, given the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved in 1992.
‘A groundswell of public support’
After being resentenced, Desic applied to the governor of NSW, Margaret Beazley, to exercise her royal prerogative of mercy and commute his sentence.
The rarely invoked prerogative, a broad discretionary power, technically rests with the state’s governor, exercised on the advice of government ministers. After more than a year, Desic’s application for commutation was rejected.
But McGirr says Desic has since applied to the federal immigration minister to be considered for a visa so he can stay in the country, citing his longstanding and strong links to the community and unblemished record before and since his 1989 conviction.
“He has been a model citizen for 29 years,” McGirr says.
Desic has sought a bridging visa – which the Guardian understands may be granted – while his substantive visa application is considered.
But if he is not given a visa, he faces being taken immediately from prison to the Villawood immigration detention centre because non-citizens without a valid visa are required to be detained under Australia’s Migration Act.
The Australian Border Force has previously written to Desic to tell him that at the end of his sentence he will be taken to immigration detention before being removed from the country.
However, he cannot be removed while he has a valid visa application before the minister, and any potential removal is complicated by the fact there is no extant nation of which he is a citizen.
McGirr says there are compelling reasons for allowing Desic to stay in Australia and widespread support for him to be welcomed back into his community.
“People have accommodation for him,” McGirr says. “People have jobs for him. I’m doing this pro bono. There is a groundswell of public support. His case has really pulled at the heartstrings.
“We are seeking to allow him back into the community, into his community. But the support for him is not just on the northern beaches but all over. There is almost no one I have met that has thought it’s a good idea to kick this guy out of the country.”
A federal government spokesperson has said the minister did not comment on individual cases.
Non-citizens sentenced to imprisonment of more than 12 months automatically have their visas cancelled under Australian law but can seek revocation of that decision. The minister holds a personal power to set aside a cancellation.
In considering cancellation, the protection of the Australian community is a primary consideration, even when a person has been a long-term resident. “Strength, nature and duration of ties to Australia” are listed as subordinate considerations in ministerial direction 90 but weight should be given to the “time spent contributing positively to the Australian community”.
A life on the margins
Convicted of two counts of cultivating cannabis, Desic was sentenced in 1990 to a maximum of three years and eight months in prison, with a non-parole period of 33 months.
But in July 1992, he used a hacksaw blade to cut through the bars of his cell in Grafton jail and bolt cutters to cut through the perimeter fence.
He escaped to avoid being deported at the end of his sentence to his homeland of Yugoslavia, he said later, which was then descending into civil war and from where he had fled as a teenager in the 1970s to escape compulsory military service.
Yugoslavia ceased to exist as a country in April 1992. The Adriatic port town of Jablanac where Desic grew up is now part of Croatia. Desic may have a claim to Croatian citizenship but proving his historical connection may be difficult after more than four decades away.
In 29 years as a fugitive in Australia, Desic built a life on the margins.
He’d never held a Medicare card – when his teeth rotted he’d pulled them out himself with pliers. He couldn’t apply to Centrelink for assistance. He walked or caught a bus to every job because he couldn’t get a driver’s licence.
It was a secretive existence but hardly solitary. Desic’s had been a life of friendship and labour, of community and reciprocity. A tradesman, he’d taught himself stonemasonry and worked cash-in-hand jobs, fixing rentals for estate agents. He manned the till at a bottle shop.
But Desic’s liberty had always been precarious and the Covid pandemic saw the net close in. The work dried up. The tumbledown house he shared with a friend in Avalon, replete with an umbrella over the uncovered outdoor dunny, was sold, and he found himself sleeping in the sand dunes behind the beach.
A police source put it bluntly: “He handed himself in to get a roof over his head.”
In sentencing Desic for absconding, Atkinson acknowledged his “real fears” of being forcibly returned to Yugoslavia in 1992. But she said there was no alternative to prison for the serious offence of escaping custody.
“He chose to take tools and break out of the custodial centre,” she said.
But at the same time, the magistrate was at pains to note Desic’s reformed character.
“He has well and truly changed over time. Moreover, he has shown remorse and contrition by handing himself in to police… these are factors that count strongly in his favour.”
