Josh Gerstein - Australia's deal to resettle terrorists

From Saturday Morning, 8:15 am on 18 May 2019

Josh Gerstein is senior legal affairs contributor for Politico. This week he has reported on the case of Leonidas Bimenyimana and Gregoire Nyaminani, two Rwandan men who, along with a third, Francois Karake, were accused of the brutal slaughter of tourists at a gorilla watching sanctuary in 1999. Two New Zealand women, 27-year-old Rhonda Avis and 26-year-old Michelle Strathern, were amongst the victims. The Rwandans were imprisoned in the US but their case was thrown out and they were swapped to Australia, in return for imprisoned refugees, in a deal struck between President Barack Obama and then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. As Gerstein wrote in his article for Politico, "the secret arrangement seems certain to spark controversy in Australia, where immigration and refugee policies have been a political tinderbox for nearly two decades".