By Lucy Cormack
A court once labelled him the “ring-leader” of the vicious bashing, drugging and strangulation of 31-year-old Shoukat Ali Mohammed.
It named him the driver of the “joint criminal enterprise” that used a baseball bat, an electrical cord and a large dose of heroin to kill Mr Mohammed in a Redfern apartment 15 years ago, before stuffing his body in a sleeping bag and dumping it in a wheelie bin.
Basheeruddin Mohammed is wanted over the 2003 murder of Shoukat Mohammed.
Yet Basheeruddin Mohammed, an Indian national, will likely never face a murder charge in an Australian court, having fled the country on July 17, 2003, just 18 days after the gruesome murder in the Cleveland St apartment.
Knowing his visa had expired, Basheeruddin presented himself to the Department of Immigration, ensuring his swift deportation out of Australia and out of reach of homicide investigators.
He is one of at least 10 alleged killers on the run from Australia, all still wanted on serious murder charges dating as far back as the mid-1980s.
Steven Anas, Antonio Perakis and Charbel Geagea: they are the ones that got away, some to countries with which Australia holds extradition treaties, others with which it does not. The rest: whereabouts unknown.
Abraham Rodriguez fled to El Salvador.
And treaty or not, the process of extraditing a criminal back to Australia is no small task.
“If we know or believe a person has fled overseas, we will always commence the [extradition] process. But the rest relies on knowing where they are,” said the state’s head of homicide Detective Superintendent Scott Cook.
From India to El Salvador, the Philippines to Greece; Australia’s most wanted have fled to countries around the world.
Among them is Abraham Ernesto Rodriguez, wanted for the 1995 stabbing murder of schoolboy Peter Savage. Today, he is believed to be living in El Salvador.
James Dalamangas is wanted over the murder in a nightclub in 1999.Credit: NSW Police
There is James Dalamangas, thought to be living the high-life in Greece, where he fled shortly after allegedly stabbing George Giannopoulos in a Belmore nightclub in 1999.
More recently the list has grown to include Mario Marcelo Santoro, the man wanted for the murder of 38-year-old Brazilian national Cecilia Haddad.
But while they are currently evading arrest in Australia, the warrants for these people “will stay there until they can’t possibly be alive anymore,” said Detective Superintendent Cook.
“We haven't forgotten about them.”
Extradition laws
Extradition laws around the world fall into one of two camps, said Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Sydney Ivan Shearer.
Countries such as the US, UK and Australia subscribe to the anglo-American common law sphere and see “no intrinsic problem with surrendering their own nationals for an offence overseas.”
Meanwhile, countries in Europe and Latin America follow “civil law systems...derived from legal systems dating back to Rome, which refuse to extradite their own citizens...a totally outdated notion,” he said.
Whether Australia shares an extradition treaty with a foreign nation or not, investigators will always seek a wanted criminal - last year Australia made seven new extradition requests, while 20 requests continued. Six requests were granted.
But the path to successful extradition, known as the government-to-government Mutual Assistance Review, can be “lengthy and tortuous,” Professor Shearer said.
When a suspect flees Australia, police will first issue an arrest warrant, before filing a red notice with Interpol.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions must then provide an intent to prosecute, if the person is successfully returned to Australia.
A brief of evidence is gathered and an investigation affidavit is sworn in a NSW court by the officer in charge. The brief is then translated into the relevant language.
It is then considered by the Office of the Attorney-General, who has the final say before the brief is finally sent to the foreign country. Even then, there is no guarantee of success.
Detective Superintendent Cook said all of the 10 suspected killers on the run have warrants in existence, but given the time lapse since their alleged crimes, the investigations would need to be revisited.
“We may have already started [the paperwork], but if the person has moved, the process is started again for a new jurisdiction.”
Brazilian executive murdered
When the body of mining executive Cecilia Haddad was found floating in the Lane Cove River in April, her former boyfriend Mario Marcelo Santoro, her former boyfriend, also a Brazilian national.
Santoro, 40, became the prime suspect after he unexpectedly flew home to Rio de Janeiro on the same weekend Ms Haddad’s body was discovered in Woolwich.
Mario Santoro has been charged with Cecilia Haddad's murder. Credit: Facebook
After months spent building a brief of evidence, homicide detectives issued an Australian warrant for his arrest in June. However within weeks he was arrested by local police in Rio de Janeiro.
Despite a formal extradition treaty between Australia and Brazil existing since 1994, it does not apply to Brazilian citizens, while the constitution prohibits the extradition of natural citizens, even for alleged or proven crimes committed abroad.
However it does not prohibit a citizen from being tried and convicted in Brazil.
Since his arrest, the Brazilian government has actively engaged in conversation with NSW homicide investigators, who are understood to have now shared the full brief of evidence.
Were Santoro to be tried and convicted in Brazil for the murder of Ms Haddad in Australia, it would be fairly “exceptional,” said international law Professor Donald Rothwell, of the Australian National University.
“It’s not often the case countries will seek to prosecute for an extra-territorial murder.”
However it would not be the first. In 2003 a Lebanese court sentenced Australian man Charbel “Charlie” Geagea, then-26, to 20 years in the notorious Roumieh jail outside Beirut, for the murder of Kings Cross underworld figure Danny Karam in Surry Hills in December 1998.
Geagea was one of the last men wanted by NSW Police over the killing, in which Karam was riddled with bullets by members of his own organised crime syndicate, then known as Danny’s Boys or DK’s Boys.
Shortly after the murder Geagea fled Australia for Lebanon, where he held dual citizenship, and was picked up by local police three years later.
Charbel Geagea
At the time Geagea was also wanted in Australia for the alleged gang murder of Pierre Drouby, who was bashed and shot five times at a Belmore 7-Eleven in 1999.
Australia does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, however Lebanese citizens can be tried for crimes committed in another country.
Extraordinarily, NSW investigators had little to no contact with Lebanese authorities, who it is understood convicted Geagea almost entirely off media reports, after declining any liaison with NSW Police or access to evidence collected in Australia.
Despite his conviction over the murder of Karam, Geagea remains on the NSW most wanted list for both deaths, until an Australian court can be satisfied that the conviction was in fact served.
Reports have recently surfaced that Geagea has been sighted in Europe, despite having another five years left on his sentence.
It is understood NSW investigators were not informed of his release by Lebanese authorities and have had no communication from them in recent years.
Professor Rothwell said it speaks to the “enormous challenges” involved with bringing about successful criminal prosecution across borders.
“In this situation the criminal prosecution, the trial, the sentencing processes, the circumstances surrounding parole are just entirely given over to the foreign legal system,” Professor Rothwell said.
“So Australia would have no capacity at all to intervene in this matter.”
Detective Superintendent Cook said the most important part of any cross-jurisdictional investigation was “respecting another country’s laws,” which at times, can be hindered by incremental media coverage.
In particular, he said the Haddad case has highlighted the complexity of policing in an international environment.
“When it is in the media it makes these sorts of negotiations more difficult. It puts pressure on countries and their diplomats and it’s not always in the best interest of the victims for the outcomes of the investigations,” he said.