Australian lawyer representing the 55 people says they had been jailed as adults while still minors

More than 50 Indonesian minors who crewed asylum-seeker boats want compensation from the Australian government for being jailed as adults.

The 55 Indonesians have joined a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission about their treatment while in prison,, and have flagged potential federal court action against the federal government.

Canberra lawyer Sam Tierney, of Ken Cush & Associates, said many of them were tried, convicted and sent to adult prisons for people-smuggling offences.

Attempts to verify their age were either insufficient or relied on flawed wrist x-ray testing, he said.

'They are victims': the Indonesian minors jailed in Australia and their five-year legal battle Read more

In some cases, the children spent long periods in adult jails. Tierney said one case involved imprisonment for about 800 days.

The experience had caused great hardship, he said. Several children had been physically and sexually abused, and still suffered psychological trauma, he added.

“We’re talking about kids locked up with the worst of the worst in Australia,” Tierney said. “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that they’ve had a hard time.

“I think it would be fair to say that, in a lot of instances, they’re still confused about why they ended up where they did, and why they were treated the way they were.”



The Australian government has previously faced compensation claims for their handling of cases involving minors in people-smuggling operations.

In 2012, the Australian Human Rights Centre warned the government could face a large number of civil cases, after detaining an estimated 200 minors on people-smuggling charges during the four previous years.

Last year, the issue was given renewed impetus by a decision of the West Australian court of appeal in the case of Ali Jasmin.

When he was 13, Jasmin, played a minor role in a 2009 people-smuggling operation that sought to bring 55 Afghan asylum-seekers to Australia.

He was eventually sentenced as an adult to serve five years in Perth’s Hakea Prison, a maximum security facility, for people-smuggling offences.

Police had relied on a flawed wrist x-ray test to calculate his age. An Indonesian birth certificate showing he was a juvenile had been available.

Last year, court justices Robert Mazza and Robert Mitchell overturned his conviction. “I am satisfied that a miscarriage of justice … has occurred,” the judgment said. “If the appellant was aged under 18 years when he allegedly committed the offence, the mandatory minimum penalty … for an adult, did not apply to him, and he should have been sentenced by the children’s court.”

Jasmin has since launched a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

The 55 new clients referred to by Tierney are joining that complaint.

“If we were dealing with Australian kids – for example what happened in the Northern Territory – there would be a royal commission and massive changes afoot,” Tierney told Guardian Australia.



The Human Rights Commission will need to accept the 55 new complaints, as they are being made late.

It can facilitate conciliation, inquire and make recommendations, but cannot force the commonwealth to pay compensation.

Tierney said more avenues were available through the courts, if compensation was not able to be achieved through the commission.



Some of the Indonesians involved in the complaint were already involved in a court case in Indonesia against the Australian government.

Indonesian solicitor Lisa Hiariej told the ABC, which first reported the story, that the move had blindsided her, and that her clients had been stolen.

But Tierney said the Indonesian case had no prospects for success, given it was outside Australia’s jurisdiction, and that the Indonesians were free to choose their representation.