{"id":1072,"date":"2008-03-07T16:19:02","date_gmt":"2008-03-07T06:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2008-03-08T01:46:51","modified_gmt":"2008-03-07T15:46:51","slug":"g20-akin-sari-sentenced-to-28-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1072","title":{"rendered":"G20 : Akin Sari sentenced to 28 months"},"content":{"rendered":"

29 year-old student Akin Sari was today sentenced by Judge Roy Punshon to 28 months jail, with a 14 month minimum before becoming eligible for parole (and having already served 7) after Sari plead guilty to nine charges. He was also fined…<\/em><\/p>\n

G20 rioter jailed
\nEmily Power
\nHerald Sun<\/em>
\nMarch 8, 2008<\/p>\n

A PROTESTER involved in the violent G20 riots has been jailed for 14 months after denouncing his own actions.<\/p>\n

Akin Sari was among a group of demonstrators who stormed a city office, attacked a police brawler van, rammed police lines with plastic barricades and hurled rocks, rubbish bins and milk crates.<\/p>\n

Judge Roy Punshon said it was to Sari’s credit that he had acknowledged his behaviour during the November 2006 riots was unacceptable.<\/p>\n

Judge Punshon said Sari’s change of attitude sent an important message to the public and others who protested the Group of 20 nations summit, held in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

“You are entitled to hold the views you have — the crimes concern your behaviour,” the judge said.<\/p>\n

Defence barrister Dermott Dann earlier told the court Sari, 29, believed extreme measures were required but now understood they were unacceptable.<\/p>\n

Sari was sentenced to 28 months’ jail, with a minimum of 14, and was ordered to pay $8310 compensation for damage to a police brawler van.<\/p>\n

He has already served 215 days in custody after he was detained for fleeing to Sydney last year while on bail.<\/p>\n

The court heard Sari was one of 20 protesters who barged into the Defence Recruiting Centre on Swanston St on November 17, tearing down posters and graffiti-ing walls.<\/p>\n

The next day Sari, disguised in a white jumpsuit, menaced two traffic event controllers with a metal pole and smashed the front window of their car.<\/p>\n

Sari was part of a group who confronted police at Collins St, where officers were pelted with bottles and stones.<\/p>\n

One policeman broke his wrist and another tore the tendons in her elbow.<\/p>\n

“They tried to hide behind a brawler van,” Judge Punshon told Sari.<\/p>\n

“A DVD shows you throwing objects at police.”<\/p>\n

Sari, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary and theft, two counts of common assault and riot, and three counts of criminal damage.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Chris Beale said 10 of 23 accused protesters would plead guilty this month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jail for G20 protester who ‘terrorised’ victims<\/a>
\nSarah-Jane Collins
\nThe Age<\/em>
\nMarch 7, 2008<\/p>\n

A protester who threw a metal bar through a police van window and hurled rocks and bottles at police as part of a series of anti-G20 riots was today jailed for 28 months.<\/p>\n

Akin Sari, 29, had pleaded guilty to nine charges including aggravated burglary, riot and common assault for his role in the anti-G20 protests in November 2006.<\/p>\n

County Court Judge Roy Punshon said Sari had acted in a manner that had “terrorised” his victims.<\/p>\n

“You grabbed the female victim by the arm at one stage and menaced both victims with a metal pole,” he said.<\/p>\n

Sari was part of a group of protesters who entered an Australian Defence Force recruitment office on November 17, 2006 and vandalised the reception area.<\/p>\n

The next day a group of protesters – some wearing white jumpsuits and head scarves in an attempt to avoid identification – rioted twice in designated protest areas, hurling bottles and rocks at police and grabbing barricades and poles to use as weapons, Judge Punshon said.<\/p>\n

“I readily accept that the uniformed police involved would have been very frightened … each incident was relatively brief. However, it would have seemed to last much longer.”<\/p>\n

Sari will serve a non-parole period of 14 months and has been ordered to pay compensation for damage caused.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In sentencing, Judge Roy Punshon told the court Sari had serious, genuine, and longstanding political views and had provided the court with a two-page letter, outlining his opposition to the economic summit. Judge Punshon said Sari was entitled to hold those views but it was his behaviour he was being sentenced for. ~ G20 protester jailed<\/a>, ABC, March 7, 2008<\/p>\n

Bob Gould, Australian Labor Party<\/a><\/strong>, November 21, 2006:<\/p>\n

The essential question is the fact that these irresponsible political adventurers disguise their faces. I agree strongly with Mick Armstrong\u2019s post on this matter on Leftwrites [below], and I defer to his knowledge, based on his investigation as to who these people were. The very act of people from outside a city invading a demonstration in another city with the clear intention of launching a semi-military attack on the cops, with their faces covered, irrespective of the consequences for the rest of the demonstrators, is a calculated political act directed against the bulk of the demonstrators.<\/p>\n

People with covered faces who attack the cops, unless they are rather unlucky and their covering falls off, are very dangerous to everybody else at the demonstrations, and quite possibly include fascists and agents provocateur\u2026 real agents provocateur certainly do exist, and organised contingents with covered faces clearly facilitate the [activities] of real agents provocateur\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Margarita Windisch, Democratic Socialist Perspective<\/a><\/strong>, November 19, 2006:<\/p>\n

…stressed that the white-clad, masked individuals were separate from the protesters towards whom they had displayed \u201ca surly and hostile attitude.\u201d She added that their actions were \u201cself-indulgent and parasitic in that for the sake of some macho fantasies, they enabled those who do not want our message to get across to portray us as mindless idiots.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mick Armstrong, Socialist Alternative<\/a><\/strong>, November 19, 2006:<\/p>\n

I was one of the organisers of the G20 demo from the [Melbourne] Stop the War Coalition and I am also in Socialist Alternative.<\/p>\n

The anarchist crazies involved in the ultra-violence were in no serious sense part of the demo. Just like their black bloc mates in Europe they simply exploited the demo for their own purposes.<\/p>\n

Right throughout the lead-up to the demo they made clear their hostility to and contempt [for] other protestors. On the day they did all they could to disrupt the demonstration and were hostile, abusive, threatening [and] ultra-sectarian towards people on the demo.<\/p>\n

Australia[,] fortunately[,] has not previously been blighted by the sort of black bloc anarchist activities which [have] had such a disastrous impact on demonstrations in Europe. These people are simply provocateurs that open up protests to police repression. In Europe their ranks have been riddled by police agents and fascists.<\/p>\n

What gave them a certain critical mass at the G20 was the presence of considerable numbers of anarchists from overseas. One of our members from New Zealand said he recognised at least 40 NZ anarchists. He knew at least 20 of them by name. There were also a considerable number of black [bloc] anarchists from Europe. We know of people from Sweden, Germany and England. These people are like football hooligans who travel the world looking for violence.<\/p>\n

On top of that there were also a considerable number of anarchists from interstate.<\/p>\n

Because of the behaviour of these provocateurs the media [and\u2026] the law and order brigade are having a field day.<\/p>\n

The left should offer no comfort to these crazies. We should do whatever we can to isolate them. They are wreckers. If they grow in Australia it will simply make it harder to build future protests and movements.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also<\/em> : G20: And \u2018revolutionary Marxism\u2019<\/a> | G20<\/a><\/p>\n

IT WAS obvious on the first day of Chris Hurley\u2019s manslaughter trial that the police officer was unlikely to go to jail over the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee.<\/p>\n

No matter that it wouldn\u2019t have taken much for the 200-centimetre, 115-kilogram senior sergeant with the short fuse to fell the drunk, barefoot 74-kilogram Aboriginal man. No matter that three doctors testified that a knee to the abdomen most likely split Mr Doomadgee\u2019s liver in two and caused him to bleed to death. No matter that Mr Doomadgee had provoked Hurley by resisting arrest and punching him.<\/p>\n

With no other witnesses to the event, it was always going to be difficult for the jury to decide beyond reasonable doubt that Senior Sergeant Hurley deliberately caused Mr Doomadgee\u2019s fatal injuries… ~ A predictable result three years in the making<\/a>, Cosima Marriner, The Age<\/em>, June 21, 2007<\/p>\n