Two Rwandan refugees resettled in Australia posed a danger, says US judge

LAURA TINGLE, PRESENTER: News that two Rwandan men had been resettled in Australia as part of a refugee swap with the United States caused a minor stir during the final stages of the election campaign.

The two men were brought here late last year under a refugee swap arrangement made between the Obama administration and the Turnbull government.

Both Rwandans were involved in a massacre which saw eight foreign tourists killed.

The fact they are now living freely in Australia has angered survivors of the attack and families of the victims.

Tonight, 7.30 speaks exclusively to the US judge who found those men posed a threat to the safety and security of the United States.

This story from reporter, Julia Holman and producer, Alex McDonald.

NEWS READER: A very busy night. Now breaking news - an angry phone call between President Trump and one of our four closest allies.

NEWS READER: President Trump calling the Australian refugee agreement "a very bad deal".

REPORTER: Why is the President picking a fight with Australia?

SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The President is unbelievably disappointed in the previous administration's deal that was made.

JULIA HOLMAN, REPORTER: In January 2017, Donald Trump phoned Malcolm Turnbull.

The US President was incensed about what he termed a "dumb deal" that he had inherited from his predecessor.

DONALD TRUMP, US PRESIDENT: I love Australia as a country but we had a problem where, for whatever reason, President Obama said that they were going to take probably well over 1,000 illegal immigrants who were in prisons and they were going to bring them and take them into this country and I just said, "Why?"

ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH, POLITICO: It certainly looked like it was a pretty skewed deal in favour of Australia and that's not a particularly usual situation when you've got deals done between Australia and the US.

JULIA HOLMAN: The full details of the so-called refugee swap deal were never made public but it's now emerged the US Government had immigration issues of its own that needed fixing.

ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH: I don't think anyone could have really imagined Australia taking in suspects from a massacre from 1999 who had been languishing in a US prison.

JULIA HOLMAN: The origins of the deal that the US would make with Australia can traced back to a violent attack in the Ugandan jungle more than 20 years ago.

PAYTON ROOCKE, SURVIVOR: Always read novels and books about Africa. I had saved up enough money through my first job and then booked a safari to Africa. It was the number one thing that I wanted to do.

ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH: They were on a gorilla watching expedition and they were in a camp, some of them were on quite a luxury tour. So it was the sort of thing that you do once in a lifetime.

PAYTON ROOCKE: A I was getting out of my bed, that's when the gunfire started.

JULIA HOLMAN: It was March 1999 and Australian, Payton Roocke, along with dozens of other tourists was hoping to see the gorillas in the wild.

But just after dawn the travellers were attacked by more than 100 Hutu rebels from neighbouring Rwanda.

PAYTON ROOCKE: It got louder and closer and that's when I started to get a little bit angsty. What's going on?

JULIA HOLMAN: Terrified, Payton fled into the forest to escape the dawn raid.

PAYTON ROOCKE: They rounded them all up and put them in a line and then they marched them down to the other campsite that was actually in the jungle.

DEANNE HAUBNER NORTON, VICTIM'S SISTER: My brother Rob and his wife, Susan, they loved to travel. They wanted to go see the mountain gorillas that were there in Uganda so that's why they made the trip over to Africa.

JULIA HOLMAN: DeAnne Haubner Norton's brother Rob and her sister-in-law, Susan, were among the 17 tourists who were forced to march into the jungle.

DEANNE HAUBNER NORTON: The last 24 hours of her life was horrific.

MARK ROSS, TOUR GUIDE: There was nothing you could do when you have machine guns pointed at you.

JULIA HOLMAN: Mark Ross was leading Rob and Susan's tour group and was also taken hostage by the rebel militia.

MARK ROSS: You do what you're told, you go where you're told or they just shove you and they started stripping your watch and your clothes off you and you have to, all you can do is comply.

JULIA HOLMAN: The militia split up the tourists.

In the hours that followed eight of them were killed, including Rob and Susan.

DEANNE HAUBNER NORTON: We only know that Rob was killed by machete and we don't even really know why they murdered him. I don't know what reason.

Rob thought that Susan had gone back to safety. So Rob didn't have to deal with knowing that she had been raped and murdered the way that she was.

So I take some solace in that, that Rob never knew. He thought she was safe.

JULIA HOLMAN: The brutal attack made headlines around the world.

NEWS REPORTER: These are the rather eerie remains of what was Bwindi's most luxurious safari camp.

DEANNE HAUBNER NORTON: I remember being on the floor of my bathroom sobbing and screaming and crying because they were gone.

I guess Rob was kind of the glue that kept us all together and there were rebels. It wasn't just one man and one woman that got murdered, their family was destroyed, our family was destroyed.

It's just never been the same since.

PAYTON ROOCKE: At the time you're devastated. I can't imagine what a few of the other people went through.

MARK ROSS: So I was trying to keep my people alive but you can't, what can you say, what can you do?

You don't get closure on something like this when you knew people that were murdered.

JULIA HOLMAN: So how is the massacre in Africa 20 years ago connected to the US-Australia refugee deal?

In 2002 three of the Hutu rebels confessed to the murders of Americans, Rob Haubner and Susan Miller.

The following year they were extradited to the United States facing the death penalty.

But three years later a US judge ruled their confessions were made under torture in Rwanda and the case collapsed.

To the frustration of US authorities, the men then sought asylum in the United States.

DEANNE HAUBNER NORTON: Here we thought we were having closure and someone was going to pay for killing my brother and Susan and I was devastated.

JULIA HOLMAN: In 2007, Judge Wayne Iskra assessed and denied their claims for asylum.

WAYNE ISKRA, RETIRED IMMIGRATION JUDGE: They were members of an organisation called the ALIR which is a terrorist group.

JULIA HOLMAN: Judge Iskra believed the men posed a danger to the security of the United States.

WAYNE ISKRA: I made the decision that these individuals were dangerous when I denied their applications for asylum.

So at that time, the time of that hearing, I made a determination that they were a danger to the community.

JULIA HOLMAN: The judge accepted the findings that the men had confessed under torture.

He didn't rule on whether the men had committed the murders.

WAYNE ISKRA: I didn't have any evidence that they, that either of these individuals did any of the killing, but they were there when the killing occurred and therefore, they would be considered a persecutor of others and a danger.

ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH: What happened was a bit of a nightmare for the American authorities because they had these men who were accused of significant crimes and who authorities still were convinced were responsible for these crimes who were sitting in immigration detention centres.

JULIA HOLMAN: In 2008, a State Department cable published by WikiLeaks reveals attempts by the US to send the men back to Rwanda.

Those attempts ultimately failed.

The men faced indefinite detention unless they could be resettled in another country - eventually Australia would take two of them.

ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH: They had these guys who they had previously labelled as some of the worst of the worst.

It was a hugely embarrassing thing to them, to have to go to various countries and say, "Can you please take these guys?"

JULIA HOLMAN: The refugee swap deal with Australia presented an opportunity to make America's problem go away.

The leaked transcript from that 2017 phone call with Donald Trump revealed Malcolm Turnbull told the US President, "We will take anyone that you want us to take."

When news website Politico broke the story in the final days of the Australian election campaign, the Prime Minister was repeatedly questioned about accepting the two Rwandans.

(Excerpt from 7.30, 16th May, 2019)

SCOTT MORRISON, PRIME MINISTER: Well, I can confirm, Leigh, that the two individuals that have been subject to this reporting were subject to the security and character assessments and that security process cleared those individuals.

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: And where are they now?

SCOTT MORRISON: They're in Australia and they were cleared of those particular matters in terms of Australia's assessment of those particular matters and I can confirm that.

(End of excerpt)

JULIA HOLMAN: 7.30 has made several attempts to contact the two Rwandan men now living in Australia about claims raised in this story.

The Government maintains the men have been vetted by security agencies and in a statement to 7.30 a spokesperson for the Immigration Minister, David Coleman, says Australia has not and does not take anyone who has been issued an adverse security assessment.

PAYTON ROOCKE: I don't know why we took them in. Even with all the security measures that we've been told that they've gone through, I just can't see why they came to Australia in this fashion.

DEANNE HAUBNER NORTON: I thought actually that they were living scott-free in the United States which made me angry in itself.

But then to find out that they actually got released and were in Australia which made no sense, just doesn't seem like justice.

It just seems wrong.