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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/06/darko-dougie-desic-fugitive-turned-sydney-identity-granted-permanent-visa>
"Darko “Dougie” Desic – a fugitive turned handyman turned Sydney local identity
– has been released from immigration detention and granted a permanent visa to
live in Australia.
And for the first time in decades, he now has a Medicare card, along with the
right to stay in his adopted homeland.
Desic – known across Sydney’s northern beaches as ‘Dougie’ – made global
headlines last year when he handed himself into New South Wales police after 29
years at large, offering officers at the Dee Why station the understatement: “I
believe you’ve been looking for me.”
Now aged 65, 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 had been hiding in plain
sight, becoming something of an identity on Sydney’s northern beaches. He built
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 on sand dunes. He turned himself in 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.
After his new sentence expired in December last year – and facing the unique
prospect of potential removal to a country that no longer existed, given the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved in 1992 - Desic was moved
into Villawood immigration detention centre.
But on Monday, Desic was granted a permanent visa to live in Australia as well
as a Medicare card."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
