According to foreign media reports, on the 28th, a 64-year-old Australian man who has been on the run for nearly 30 years, Darko Desic, was sentenced to an additional two months in prison after turning himself in.
During the pandemic, Sydney was completely locked down, leaving Desic unemployed and homeless. Last month he had to turn himself in to Australian police and admit to his own escape from Grafton prison in 1992.
Desic, himself a Yugoslav, fled to Australia in the 1990s to avoid military service. In 1991, he was sentenced to 3 years and 8 months in prison for illegally growing marijuana. However, after entering prison, desic decided to escape from prison because he was afraid that he would be deported after his release and faced a new round of imprisonment.
In August 1992, after 13 months of planning, Desic began his own jailbreak on one night. Since the prison guards were not particularly strict at the time, he sawed off the fence of the cell by means of a saw stolen from the workshop, left through the window, and then used the broken line tongs to break a hole in the prison fence and successfully escaped.
After escaping from prison, Desic quickly escaped from Grafton to Sydney and settled on the north coast of Sydney, living off odd jobs. For 30 years, he has lived a quiet and low-key life.
However, the epidemic shattered his dreams.
The growing pandemic has led sydney to impose a total lockdown and not be able to get out, and Desic's gig career has come to an end, and he is no longer as competitive as he was young, and he has not been able to find a job since. In the end, Desic didn't even have a place to stay, and was forced to find a place to spend the night on the beach. After a few days of doing so, Desic, 64, couldn't stand it any longer. So he turned himself in to the Sydney police on September 12, ending his nearly 30 years on the run.
Desic has been detained in prison since turning himself in mid-September. He confessed to his escape 29 years ago, and after the verdict, he will be sent back to prison to complete the remaining 14 months of the 33 months he was sentenced to marijuana supply, in addition to an additional 2 months of imprisonment for escaping from prison.
However, the result of fleeing for 30 years and facing an additional 2 months in prison has also sparked some controversy.
Prosecutor Scott Williams called for Desic to be sentenced to a full sentence instead of an easy 2 months. Under Australian law, a prison break is punishable by up to ten years in prison. In order to prevent other prisoners from following suit, it should be made clear that they will be punished "regardless of how long it has been since they were caught".
But McGirr, Desic's defense attorney, said Darko Desic had been on the run for 30 years, and his handyman community loved and respected him. Moreover, he himself has in fact been living under the burden of being arrested at any time.
Magistrate Jennifer Atkinson also said decades have passed since Desic was last convicted and that he has changed. And, he clearly had a significant impact on the communities in which he worked.
At present, the Australian Border Guard has written to Desic saying that he will be deported after serving his sentence. However, it is unclear which country Desic will be deported from prison.
Wuhan Morning Post intern reporter Zhang Jiao