People-smuggler jailed for 14 years in Australia
Purchase this article for republication
Buy SPH photos
This file photo shows a group of asylum seekers aboard a maritime police boat in Indonesia, on Oct 9, 2012, three days after their boat was badly damaged after hitting a reef as they tried to reach Australia's Christmas Island. Ali Khorram Heydarkhani was jailed for 14 years on Monday for organising at least four people-smuggling boats from Indonesia to Australia, including an ill-fated vessel which crashed off Christmas Island in 2010, killing 50 people. -- PHOTO: AFP
SYDNEY (AFP) - An Iranian-born man was jailed for 14 years on Monday for organising at least four people-smuggling boats from Indonesia to Australia, including an ill-fated vessel which crashed, killing 50 people.
Ali Khorram Heydarkhani, 41, was ordered to serve nine-and-a-half years without parole after pleading guilty to four counts of people-smuggling in the Perth District Court last month.
The journeys, made between June 2010 and January 2011, included a doomed vessel that disintegrated in a violent storm off Australia's Christmas Island, a remote Indian Ocean territory, in December 2010 killing 50 asylum seekers.
Three Indonesians who were crewing the smuggling ship were jailed for at least three years last month.
