Imad Yousef Al Qatrani is a former soldier of Saddam Hussein who moved to Australia in 1994 and reportedly got a DUI, beat up his wife, and gangraped a young woman. He was apparently notorious enough to be referenced in the government's updated parole guidelines (page 69).
The 57-year-old apparently got only 7 years in jail for the rape and was ordered deported, but that order was stayed in 2008 by former immigration minister Chris Evans.
Al Qatrani was then arrested again in 2017 for plotting to smuggle "254kg of cocaine and 103kg of methamphetamine into Australia." He was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2021.
Guess what? After several years of deliberating, Australian officials say he can stay in Australia once he gets out:
After his permanent visa was cancelled following his 2021 conviction Al Qatrani made an application to revoke the cancellation, which was refused in February this year, but last week he successfully reviewed the decision at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Sydney.
ART Senior Member Mark Harrowell overturned the cancellation using Ministerial Direction 110, which has been maintained by immigration minister Tony Burke since 2024, and has resulted in dozens of serious criminals being spared deportation in recent months.
According to The Daily Telegraph in 2021, Al Qatrani and his drug-smuggler buddies got into a fight when they opened the shipping container with all the drugs and found someone (the police) had swapped the goods with bricks.
...the Australian end of the operation accused the South ΒAfrican drug lords of ripping them off by sending a container full of bricks and keeping the drugs and money they paid for the shipment.
There was betrayal going on, but it was happening among the members of the Australian end over promised payments.
Al Qatrani, the rapist Saddam Hussein soldier who beats his wife, was meanwhile trying to scam the drug lords:
Imad Al Qatrani, [then] 52, whose job was to manage the delivery of the drugs to a Riverstone warehouse, organised for himself to be paid a six figure sum without telling his partners in crime. He then short-changed his colleagues on the payments he was supposed to make to them, court documents said.
That's the guy that Australian officials want to keep in Australia.
It's okay though, because tribunal official Mark Harrowell said Qatrani is a "changed man," you see.
Mr Harrowell noted in his decision that Al Qatrani has two minor children aged 9 and 11 with his current wife - a South Korean national who he met in 2009, and an adult son with his first wife, and that he claimed he was a 'changed man from the one sentenced to the crime I was convicted of nine years ago.
Harrowell also said it was just be too unfair to Qatrani's kids and Korean wife if he were deported for his life of crime, to which I would remind him:
Can't wait to hear about Qatrani's next crime.
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