The Indonesian fisher who led the challenge against Australia’s unlawful detention of hundreds of children found on people-smuggling boats has urged the government to help quash all remaining convictions linked to the scandal.
The federal government relied on a deeply flawed age assessment technique – interpretations of wrist X-rays – to detain hundreds of Indonesian children found crewing people-smuggling boats in 2009 and the early 2010s.
The use of the X-rays to assess their ages meant children as young as 12 were sent to maximum security adult prisons as people smugglers instead of being returned home in line with commonwealth policy.
Despite repeated findings that the wrist X-ray technique caused miscarriages of justice, some Indonesian children remain convicted people smugglers.
Lawyers believe roughly 20 Indonesians remain convicted criminals on the basis of the flawed age assessments.
That includes Anto, who was just 15 when he was arrested, and Samsul Bahar, who both exhausted their criminal appeal rights on other grounds, leaving them in legal limbo.
Guardian Australia previously published photos taken by federal police and immigration officials when Anto and Samsul were detained, showing their childlike features and the dates of birth they gave authorities, which made them 15.
Ali Yasmin, who was arrested at age 12 and detained in Hakea, Western Australia’s notorious adult maximum security prison, has called for those and any other remaining convictions to be quashed.
Yasmin, represented by Ken Cush and Associates, was the first of any of the Indonesians to have their convictions quashed, and was followed by six others in 2022.
He was more recently the lead claimant in a major class action against the federal government, which settled for $27.5m plus legal costs.
Speaking from Indonesia via an interpreter, Yasmin told Guardian Australia that the Australian government should intervene to help other children whose convictions remained.
“[I] would like to see the government step in to overturn the convictions, just like what happened with [me],” he said.
Yasmin said he was happy the class action settlement was concluded, but said his life was “still much the same”.
“I’m happy and relieved that it’s over, both for myself and the other children,” he said.
In 2022, Guardian Australia revealed that police, despite hearing of concerns about the reliability of the wrist X-ray technique, used it to alter dates of birth given to them by the Indonesian children – changing the year of birth, but keeping the month and date – to turn them into adults and make their age fit the X-ray interpretations.
The new dates were used in sworn documents, including prosecution notices and indictments to prosecute the children as adults.
Colin Singer, a former independent prison visitor in Perth who has fought for the rights of the boys since encountering some in Hakea prison, said the government should establish a scheme allowing convictions to be quashed en masse.
That is something currently being done in connection with a separate mass false conviction scandal in the UK, caused by the wrongful prosecution of 900 British Post Office operators.
“It’s even more important with kids, who did nothing wrong,” Singer said.
Singer said the scandal should also prompt a formal apology from the government and an inquiry.
“I think there should be a formal apology, that’s a simple thing, but I think there should be a formal inquiry into this,” he said. “How did we end up in a situation where 240 young children, who were identified as such by immigration, ended up in adult immigration and adult prisons. What went wrong?”
Yasmin is still fishing in Indonesia and wants to start a business, but says it will be easier to move on with his life now that the class action is behind him.
Asked what he wants to say to Australians about what happened to him, he said: “The message [I] would like to talk about is that these children were mixed in with the adults, it is important that this message be shared with the Australian government, that these kids were in with the adults.”
