Martens, Moti and the ‘rule of law’ in Australia

Captain Fred Martens, whom I have written extensively about on Blak and Black in the past, was employed as a commercial pilot flying light aircraft within PNG and between PNG and Australia. In 2004 Captain Martens became a victim of Australian Federal Police (“AFP”) corruption and/or incompetence, which resulted in the loss of his business interests in PNG, the loss of his freedom (he was incarcerated for nearly 1,000 days due to the incompetence and/or negligence or as alleged by Captain Martens, the criminal conduct of the AFP), the loss of one of his children who died for want of proper medical care in PNG while Captain Martens was in jail in Queensland, serving time for a crime for which he was subsequently exonerated by the Queensland Court of Appeal (“QCA”).

Not only did Captain Martens lose his business, his child and his freedom because of the corrupt and/or incompetent actions of the AFP, he was forced to suffer the indignities associated with the loss of his reputation and his health, both physical and psychological. Adding insult to these injuries, Captain Martens has had to endure the endless legal machinations of a vindictive Commonwealth Government as he seeks compensations for the wrongs inflicted on him by a corrupt and/or incompetent AFP and CDPP.

Background to the Martens case

On 24 August 2004 at Cairns International Airport, Captain Martens was arrested by Tania Ann Stokes (who is also the first respondent in Captain Martens $45 million claim for damages against her and the Commonwealth of Australia) and charged with the following offences –

That between 10 September 2001 and 16 September 2001, in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Frederick Arthur MARTENS, did engage in sexual intercourse with a person who was under 16 years of age, namely [GN], contrary to section 50BA of the Crimes Act 1914, and;

That on a date in mid to late 1996, in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Frederick Arthur MARTENS, did engage in sexual intercourse with a person who was under 16 years of age, namely [DM], contrary to section 50BA of the Crimes Act 1914.

It was the charge involving GN which Martens was jailed for. The prosecution alleged that Martens twice flew her from Morehead in the Western Province of PNG to Port Moresby – first in March 2001 to obtain a passport and then on a Friday between 10 and 16 September 2001. The prosecution alleged that on the second occasion GN went with Martens as a result of subterfuge on his part, and that on arrival in Port Moresby he took her to his home where she spent the night, during which there was an act of non-consensual intercourse.

The appellant denied any act of sexual intimacy with GN. He maintained that he flew her from Morehead to Port Moresby only once, on 10 August 2001, for the purpose of making a passport application.

The AFP did not obtain relevant PNG Civil Aviation Authority records before charging him. Nor did they obtain them before the trial, despite being alerted to their existence by a letter from his solicitors to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions dated 29 December 2004. Those records confirmed the appellant’s assertion that he did not fly from Morehead to Port Moresby as alleged in September 2001 and their production as fresh evidence led ultimately to the conviction being quashed.

Captain Martens statement of claim

AFP Agent Tania Stokes, the first respondent in Martens statement of claim, arrested him on 24 August 2004 and charged him with the two offences. Martens alleges that Stokes, while giving evidence at his committal, said she would carry out investigations suggested by the appellant, but that she failed, refused and neglected properly to do so. Martens further alleges that AFP Agent Stokes did not question the complainant about her differing statements, that she failed to trace the complainant’s movements, and that she failed to assess the credit worthiness of witnesses.

Assessment of the credit worthiness of witnesses

A recurrent theme in all of the allegations of misconduct by the AFP, which I have raised on Blak and Black over the last eighteen months, revolves around the politicisation of the force during the Howard/Kealty dyarchy.

Western style police forces, including the Australian Federal Police are supposed to be free to decide whether or not to pursue cases fairly and impartially, relying only on the facts and the law. Pursuant to this concept, individual police officers are supposed to be above or immune from political pressure, legislative pressure, special interest pressure, media pressure, public pressure, financial pressure or even personal pressure. Once a police force becomes politicised to the extent that decisions on career progress become dependent on political favour, these immunities cease to exist or at the very least, to function independently. A further concern is that once the police force(s) of a country become politicised, the judiciary has the potential to follow.

In Australia, there appears to be a common tendency to confuse the concepts of power and freedom as well as to disregard the differences between the economic and political means. When these tendencies are brought together the result is a general acceptance of politics as morally defensible. When greed and envy are used to justify initiating the use of force, politics then becomes perceived as the arbiter of justice. The use of an immoral end (greed/envy) to validate the use of an immoral means (force) will lead to the breakdown of the morals in a society. The state thus imposes immorality on society in a process of politicisation that undermines the economic order.

The politicisation of the AFP during the Howard/Kealty dyarchy has resulted in ‘empowered’ politicians at the Commonwealth and State/Territory levels of government in Australia becoming the arbiters of justice, a ‘just-us’ enforced via the naked aggression of a politicised AFP. The victims of this process, to date, have been Captain Fred Martens in PNG, Mr Julian Moti QC in the Solomon Islands and in Australia the victims include the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue, Ms Jill Courtney, Dr Muhamed Haneef, Mr Mamdouh Habib, former AFP officer Mr Gary Lee-Rogers, Miss Schapelle Corby, Mr David Hicks, the list goes on and on and on … All of these cases, as well as others, have been discussed previously on Blak and Black.

Back to the specifics of the Captain Fred Martens saga, I am in receipt of a copy of an affidavit sworn by one Daphney Musa on 19 November 2007. This Daphney Musa is the same Daphney Musa who was identified as DM in the second of the charges brought against captain Martens following his arrest by AFP Agent Tanya Stokes at Cairns International Airport on 24 August 2004.

In her affidavit of 19 November 2007 Miss Musa states that:

The next day Tania [AFP Agent Tania Anne Stokes] came back, mum had a talk with me. She schooled me about what I had to say to Tania. She said you have to tell Tania the days on which you had sex with Fred. I said to my mum it’s not true I can’t do that. She told me I had to. She said just go and give them your statement. I was very frightened.

Everything I said too Tania about having sex with Fred was not true. I am sorry that I said things which were not true and now I want to tell the truth.

Captain Martens from the day he was charged has maintained that he was the victim of a plan revolving around one of his former wives to undermine his credibility in order to strengthen her case in an ongoing custody dispute. This is not the first time something like this has occurred and it’s unlikely to be the last. The issue is that the AFP didn’t bother to check the credit worthiness of the witnesses making allegations against Captain Martens or to probe the circumstances surrounding the making of the allegations against him by GN and DM.

At the time the allegations against Captain Martens were first made by GN and DM, the Australian Government in the persons of Prime Minister Howard and AFP Commissioner Keelty were negotiating a treaty with PNG which would allow the AFP to have a presence on the ground in PNG. These negotiations followed in the wake of the Bali bombing in 2002 which resulted in the deaths of 88 Australians. It appears likely that a politicised AFP where promotional opportunity cantered around political favour, was more interested in demonstrating to the PNG government that it was capable of treating black and white alike than with justice. A failure to successfully negotiate a treaty with PNG on terms favourable to the AFP would have been a loss of face to the Howard/Keelty dyarchy. It appears that Captain Martens was nothing more than a pawn in this power play, a pawn to be sacrificed to the immoral ends of greed and envy.

Had the AFP bothered to probe the allegations against Captain Martens more fully, which probing would have required putting politics to one side, an innocent man may not have been denied justice and forced to spend a thousand days in jail, branded a paedophile.

Character assassination; the weapon of choice for a politicised AFP

Paedophile! The very word carries with it the most odious conations imaginable. Indeed when speaking about the Julian Moti QC case during a speech to the National Press Club on October 11, 2006 Keelty in his capacity as Commissioner for the AFP said:

What if Moti was not a politician? What if he was accused of another type of crime? Albeit that it would be hard to imagine a more deplorable crime than the one alleged [i.e. pedophilia]…

Actually Mr Keelty, I can imagine a crime more deplorable than the one that Moti was alleged to have committed. The crime I’m thinking of is putting self and political interests ahead of your duty and obligations as Australia’s most senior police officer. To quote your own words:

If the criminal justice system is corrupted, or otherwise interfered with, a community is left with few options, the least desirable of those options is for them to take the law into their own hand

Take the law into your own hands, sounds like anarchy to me. Surely anarchy brought about because of the politicisation of the police force for which you were then Commissioner is a worse crime that paedophilia, even if those allegations of paedophilia were true, which in both Moti’s and Martens cases they were not!

The real value in labelling someone a paedophile, to quote from Captain Fred Martens, an innocent victim of such an allegation made against him by the AFP is:

Because of the nature of the accusations nobody wanted to know me or have anything to do with me

Like the leper of old to quote from Leviticus 13:45:

And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.

The paedophile like the leper of Leviticus is considered by society to be unclean. They have no friends and no support, because of this; they become easy prey to the forces of greed and envy. Nobody cares what happens to a pedophile. The crime is odious, the perpetrator inhuman, the outcome ostracism. What better way to assassinate the character of an opponent!

The Australian Government wanted Moti out of the way, why? Moti as Attorney-General was the most senior legal officer in the Solomon Islands. He wanted Australia out, not because of personal greed or avarice, but because he believed that the future of the people for whom he had responsibility for in his capacity as Attorney-General would be best served in an environment free of Australian racism, greed and corruption. In short Moti saw China as a better option to ensure the future prosperity of the Solomon Islands than a racist and corrupt Australia. The Howard/Keelty dyarchy responded by branding him paedophile. Behind this branding lurked Australian neo-colonial and racist ambitions in the Pacific, ambitions that could only be achieved in a Moti free Solomon Islands.

White is right, but only if your white

As a member of the Wiradjuri, I have a personal interest in what befalls the surviving remnant of a once, and still, proud people. Another AFP crime against justice and one which I have also written extensively about on Blak and Black is what befell the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue, a member of the Wiradjuri nation. While attempting to expose a ‘white’ crime perpetrated against white and black Australians alike, the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue was fitted-up and sacked by a ‘white’ ACT Government with the help of the Howard/Keelty dyarchy.

When the white man first encroached on the lives and property of the so called ‘savages’ of the Pacific he did so under the pretence of bringing the ‘rule of law’ to us. What he actually brought us was genocide, rape, theft and corruption.

In a speech to students at Melbourne Law School on 21 August 2008, Australian Attorney-General Robert McClelland spoke to the question “What does rule of law mean in Australia?” during that speech Attorney-General McClelland stated that in Australia:

An important function of government is to uphold those fundamental human rights of all citizens. In Australia the rule of law and human rights are regarded as synonymous or at least mutually supportive. They are supported by:

• our democratic system of responsible government
• the separation of powers between the Parliament, Executive Government and the Judiciary
• a professional judiciary whose independence is constitutionally protected and who hold all accountable for upholding the law
• an independent media
• an accountable, apolitical public service, and
• a comprehensive administrative law system.

While I have the upmost confidence that both Martens and Moti not to mention Haneef, Habib and Hicks would take issue with Attorney-General McClelland’s views about how strongly Australia adheres to these principles, when it comes to Australian’s of non-indigenous extraction, it’s how poorly Australia adheres to these principles when it comes to Australians of Indigenous extraction that I would like to take issue with.

The issue is that a Wiradjuri, a member of one of the ‘savage’ races that the white man purported to bring the rule of law to, attempted to hold a ‘white’ government, the ACT Government, accountable to the white man’s ‘rule of law’. The crime for which the Wiradjuri attempted to hold the white man accountable for was the theft and transfer of approximately $130,000,000.00 of ACT Government assets to the Australian Labor Party (“ALP”). This crime is alleged to have occurred at a time when the NSW Branch of the ALP was virtually bankrupt.

In September 2002, the Wiradjuri in his then capacity as Commissioner for ACT Revenue wrote to his superior, Mrs Tu Pham, then Deputy Chief Executive of the ACT Department of Treasury raising his concerns about the missing money. The issue of the missing money first came to his attention in 1999 when he was Principle Project Officer on the ACT Department of Urban Services GST Implementation Project. At that time the issue was raised with the Projects Director Mr Peter Wallace.

The letter the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue wrote to Mrs Tu Pham in September 2002 named certain people in the ACT Government Solicitors Office, ACT Treasury and the AFP as being directly or indirectly involved in the theft. The letter was returned to the former Commissioner with the following handwritten note on the front of the first page:

…advised not to proceed at this time and to hold it until called for. Robert Lewis 9/9/2002.

What is noteworthy about this letter is that the people who were mentioned in it are the same people who twelve months later were involved in the sacking, investigation and prosecution of the former Commissioner. A question for Attorney-General McClelland: “How does the Australian concept of the ‘rule of law’ accommodate those accused of serious crimes subsequently sacking, investigating and then prosecuting their accuser, without the crimes for which they were accused of over a year earlier having been first investigated?”

So much for bringing the ‘rule of law’ to the ‘savages’ of the Pacific, as I have said before the Pacific nations would be better off without Australian involvement in their internal affairs. Until Australia learns to respect indigenous rights and the ‘rule of law’, as a nation, Australia ought to be excluded from participation in any international organizations or peace keeping operations.