New evidence has emerged suggesting that Papua New Guinea’s mobile police squad may have been handed control of parts of the Manus detention centre during the February unrest that left asylum seeker Reza Barati dead.

The new evidence, submitted to the ongoing Senate inquiry into the violence, raises more questions about statements given by senior G4S executives responsible for the centre. Earlier this month they repeatedly told the inquiry that PNG police were not invited to take command of the centre.



G4S regional managing director Darren Boyd, the security company’s most senior executive in the region, said then: “At no stage did G4S request or invite the PNG police to enter the centre whilst the riots were taking place.”



John McCaffrey, deputy regional manager and second in command of the centre that evening, told the inquiry that as G4S personnel withdrew from Mike compound, where the most substantial violence subsequently took place and Barati lost his life, he had instructed police not to enter and not to use weapons.



But key passages in the newly released supplementary G4S documents appear to show the interactions between PNG mobile squad members and G4S at the time the mobile squad assumed control in Mike compound.



The G4S incident report, written shortly after the violence, states that at 10.37pm on 17 February, McCaffrey took the decision to abandon the area under sustained bombardment from protesting asylum seekers. Crucially, the log then notes: “At approximately 2248hrs, 0B [McCaffrey] advised that the responsibility for restoring law and order in Mike Compound now belonged to the Mobile Squad.”



The Senate inquiry has also now opened to public view a set of handwritten, time-coded notes (pdf), understood to be written on the night by the G4S control scribe tasked with marking a forensic account of serious incidents. The notes read: “10:48 Withdrawing from Mike (0B) [McCaffrey] handing over to MS [Mobile Squad].



A G4S document submitted to the inquiry (pdf) then notes at 11.12 pm that “police have responsibility of Mike”. This document was reviewed by G4S on 13 May 2014, nearly three months after the unrest and was authorised by McCaffrey.



On Thursday a spokesman for G4S strongly denied that any of the new evidence indicated that control had been handed to the police and said the documents all contained inaccurate information. “There was no handover of the compound or any part of the regional processing centre to the PNG police mobile squad on the night in question,” the spokesman said.



“All references to a ‘handover’ made in radio traffic or in incident reports and in the incident log were in reference to a handover of Route Pugwash West outside the centre and directly adjacent to Mike compound,” he added.



The spokesman maintained that any handover to the PNG police would need to be authorised by PNG immigration. “No such approval was sought or given by chief migration officer for a handover of the centre.”



The spokesman drew attention to the findings of the Cornall review into the incident, commissioned by the Immigration Department, which said the incident report “may be an inaccurate record”.



The PNG mobile squad entering the compound was a key turning point in the descent into violence on 17 February. These mobile squad members, armed with guns and tear gas, clashed with asylum seekers and the violence led to multiple casualties, including one asylum seeker being shot and Reza Barati losing his life. Following their entry, other local employees who had been off-duty joined the violence. G4S managers “lost control” of some of their local employees who also joined the violence, according to eyewitness statements.



Government briefings at first suggested the violence took place outside the actual detention centre. Later there was talk of “conflicting reports” of where the violence took place. But the newly released documents also show that the Australian department of immigration was clearly supplied with information, just the day after the unrest, that the violence had indeed occurred inside the detention centre, not outside. Nonetheless it took immigration minister Scott Morrison almost six days to tell the press that this was the case.



The newly released documents show an email dated Wednesday 19 February from G4S to the Department of Immigration clearly briefing them that the PNG mobile squad entered the compound. It makes clear that the department were in possession of the G4S log of the night, with further emails showing that the handwritten timeline of events was also emailed out on Tuesday 18 February. Both documents show that the violence occurred within the centre.



The revelations continue to raise questions about the judgment of centre managers tasked with ensuring the safety of asylum seekers detained in the compound. Previously, leaked emails, signed by McCaffrey, have shown that G4S was aware of the threat the mobile squad posed to detainees.



On 10 February McCaffrey emailed the department to warn of the “significant problems” of engaging the mobile squad during crowd control operations and he suggested that using them “could result in VSI [very serious injury] or death of protesters”.



A number of eyewitnesses told ABC’s Four Corners in April that the centre was handed over to the PNG mobile squad, but Chris Manning, managing director for G4S immigration services, told the ABC’s 7:30 in May that: “G4S had no authority to hand over any part of that centre that night. That authority rests with the PNG immigration authority, the chief migration officer.”



The Greens’ immigration spokeswoman, senator Sarah Hanson-Young, said the new evidence “shows that the PNG mobile squad had control and the [Immigration] Department were fully aware of this.”



“Why then did it take the minister over four days to tell the truth about what happened inside the camp and who was responsible for the brutal attacks?” Hanson-Young said.



“G4S has attempted to blame the government, and the government wants to blame everyone else but themselves. Both have attempted to conceal what they knew about what happened on the night.”

