Australia's Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail

by Phelps, James

  PRIESTLY, Ronald, DOB: 09/12/1975, received into HRMCC April 17, 2002

  Extreme High Security: Classification A1

  Another Muslim prison convert sentenced to life for murder. He was also a key figure in the 2002 Goulburn riot.

  ‘Convicted of gaol murder of inmate Lara-Gomez,’ his file reads. ‘Involved in riot and assaults on officers in Goulburn. Convicted and sentenced to long-term imprisonment for injuries to officers. Most recent threat October 3, 2007 – threatening to kill staff and do what he did to staff [during the riot] on April 16, 2002. He is keen to resume work on literacy course. He is very committed to literacy. Both his sons are incarcerated and he attempts to have contact with them.’

  PAULSON, Jamie, DOB: 31/07/1975, received into HRMCC April 17, 2002

  Extreme High Security: Classification A1

  Paulson was jailed for 22 years for armed robbery and other offences. The Indigenous Australian was converted to Islam while in Goulburn Jail.

  ‘Offences include participate in riot, maliciously inflict GBH [grievous bodily harm], involved in Goulburn riot of 2002,’ his file reads. ‘Prior convictions of escape. He is compliant with routine and staff directions. He is noted as having minimal interaction with staff. He utilises his associations well in various areas allocated for this purpose. He maintains contact with counsellors and is currently undertaking the “Managing Emotions” program.’

  These are just a few of the men secretly and extensively monitored in the prison some officers refer to as the ‘Goulburn Super Mosque’.

  ‘But not too many get caught out,’ said a current serving Supermax officer. They know their mail is monitored, and it’s only the dumb junkies that get caught on the phone. The real threats speak in code.’

  Coded Terror

  It was revealed in 2014 that convicted terrorists were using a sophisticated code to continue jihadist activities from inside Supermax. Senior Corrections officials came forward with fears that several of Australia’s most dangerous inmates were capable of plotting acts of terror because of serious security gaps, even though they were in the most secure level of confinement. The Terror Five are understood to be in shared isolation, with some sharing a cell.

  Despite being given the strictest level of inmate classification – the AA classification – these convicts are free to communicate with the outside world through letters, phone calls and visits. Leaked reports also detailed regular visits from family members.

  ‘They are kept in isolation, but that means nothing in jail,’ a high-ranking former official said. ‘Messages are passed on in many ways. It is not hard because they still get visitation rights, which are their first outlet. They can do it through mail, which they are allowed to send and receive. [The correspondence] is scrutinised and sent to ASIO, but there is still risk. They also receive phone calls.’

  The jihadists are effectively operating as a gang inside prison.

  A Custody and Sentence Planning report obtained for this book says some AA inmates are recruiting others to terrorism, while some are commanded to attempt escape. Others are ordered to become sleepers and await further instruction. One declassified AA inmate was ostracised by his own terrorist group because he drew too much attention to himself.

  ‘These guys are well prepared before they go to jail,’ a former official said. ‘They have plans in place for how the cell will operate if they are arrested.’ Another former Corrective Services employee said the Terror Five were model prisoners. ‘They are very reserved guys,’ he said. ‘They are all very low key and keep dead quiet. They don’t want to jeopardise their cell. They are prepared to sit in prison and make the sacrifice. You will never know what they are thinking.’

  Most of the inmates jailed for terror crimes lived in extremely tidy, organised cells and stuck to a strict routine.

  Category AA inmates, the report states, ‘are those inmates who, in the opinion of the commissioner, represent a special risk to national security (for example, because of a perceived risk that they may engage in, or incite other persons to engage in, terrorist activities) and should at all times be confined in special facilities within a secure physical barrier that includes towers or electronic surveillance equipment’.

  Some of the other men held under the AA classification include Mohammed Omar Jamal, who was arrested after authorities found him in possession of bomb-making instructions, 28,000 rounds of ammunition, 12 rifles, militant Islamist literature and footage of beheadings; and Mazen Touma, a suspected member of the Australian Terror Network found with ammunition and 165 railway detonators after being arrested near the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor.

  Khaled Sharrouf became the face of Australian terrorism after a photo of his seven-year-old son holding a severed head shot him to worldwide infamy. He was part of Australia’s 2005 terror plot and was jailed after stealing clocks and batteries from Big W. Sharrouf is a chronic schizophrenic and received a disability pension following his release after serving a minimum sentence.

  Sharrouf used his brother’s passport to escape to Syria last year to fight for the Islamic State. Sharrouf then claimed on Twitter to have received religious instruction while incarcerated from senior al-Qaeda leaders Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada.

  ‘Abu Muhammed almaqdisy use [sic] to give us weekly lessons from the jail phone,’ he wrote. ‘And we use to get all our knowledge only from those 2.’

  He also claimed messages were sent to prisoners through visitors: ‘When we needed something answered in prison [we] went through wives.’

  A leaked report shows Faheem Lodhi asked for protection from authorities, fearing for his ‘personal safety’. He has also been put in ‘care under placement’ for being a ‘threat to good order and discipline’.

  Without a Prayer

  An intercepted letter from a Caucasian murderer sparked a series of high-level security meetings late in 2014.

  ‘We need to ban all Islamic prayer meetings,’ said one of the intelligence officers. ‘We have no way of knowing what they are up to. They just can’t go on anymore. It’s too dangerous.’

  The following week at least one prayer session at a Sydney prison was stopped as senior officials considered blanket bans.

  The jihadist letter, understood to have been sent by jail convert Leith Marchant, was a convenient excuse for the prayer session to be banned and for calls for further bans to be made, according to a well-placed Corrections official.

  ‘We have had major concerns with prayer meetings for a long time,’ the official said. ‘They go into a room and we cannot supervise them. We suspect they are talking about more than just God. Letting them meet together and having no idea what’s going on is a major security flaw.’

  Islamic prayer sessions are held across all New South Wales jails and usually take place on Friday afternoons at 2.30. The inmates are given a room to conduct the weekly meetings; some are attended by an imam. Corrective Services admitted that some prayer sessions had and would continue to be stopped. They also confirmed a de-radicalisation program had been put in place.

  ‘Only specially vetted and accredited imams are allowed to lead the prayers,’ a spokesman said. ‘The Corrective Services Intelligence Group evaluates all activities on an ongoing basis, and prison management intervenes as required.

  ‘CSNSW has a strict assessment process for when religious leaders seek access to inmates in a correctional centre for religious purposes, under its well-recognised and longstanding chaplaincy program.

  ‘Anyone who applies must undergo strict security and information checks, including having their fingerprints taken and a national criminal record inquiry conducted. Any person who has not resided in Australia for a period of five years or more is also subject to an Interpol check.

  ‘CSNSW is working closely with other intelligence and law enforcement agencies and also provides specialised training to staff to educate on the indicators for radicalised behaviour and how to deal with it.’

  The concern
s raised by intelligence officers in late 2014 resulted in a drastic linguistic ban that stopped Supermax inmates from talking in Arabic. It was reported by the Sunday Telegraph on 8 March 2015 that 13 ‘Extreme High-Risk Restricted’ Goulburn prisoners would be forced to speak strictly in English when communicating with the outside world. New South Wales Attorney-General Brad Hazzard had called for moderate imams to be placed in the state’s jails to prevent radicalisation.

  ‘One of the issues that came out of that process was that some of these people, these high-risk inmates, were conducting their discussions in Arabic, or at least not English,’ Hazzard s aid. ‘This clearly needed looking at and action, in my view.’

  7

  CONTRABAND

  Backing a Winner

  He was a convict no more – papers signed, pre-prison possessions returned and an officer escorting him towards the gate.

  ‘I’m going to buy an expensive car,’ the fresh freeman said. ‘Nothing ridiculous like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, something more like a Porsche. Maybe even a Beamer or a Merc. That’s what I’m going to do first – I’m going to get me some nice wheels. Then I’m going to drive straight to a spray shop and get them to paint a horse on it … I’m thinking a charging stallion on the side, you know?’

  The officer looked back. He was stumped.

  ‘Why on Earth would you ruin a good car?’ he asked. ‘Are you kidding me? Wreck the paint job with a horse? I can understand why you would want a car, but a car with a horse on it?’

  ‘Want me to show you why?’ The inmate smirked. ‘Hand me your phone.’

  Why not? the officer thought. He pulled out his phone, punched in his password and handed it to the done-my-time crook. ‘Better be good – I’ve got a shit data plan.’

  Phone now in hand, the former prisoner’s grin widened.

  ‘He got on the phone and pulled up the TAB website,’ said a current Goulburn officer who asked not to be named. ‘He punched in a code and logged into his account.’

  The inmate showed the officer the screen.

  ‘His account had a balance of $990,000,’ the officer said. ‘Almost a million bucks. And he didn’t even have a TAB account before he went to Goulburn.’

  In fact, this newly minted ex-criminal had never even placed a bet – not before he went to jail and not while in jail. He hadn’t studied forms, stewed over odds or screamed winners home …

  Sure, he’d looked at his TAB account from time to time – he phoned in at least once a week to check his balance – but he never deposited funds or had a punt. He just sat back and listened to how much the balance had grown, the automated voice often making him smile.

  ‘He’d been selling drugs in prison,’ the officer said. ‘He was well known for it. And he used his betting account to get paid. People would just transfer money into his account to pay for their gear.’

  It can be revealed here that the prison drug trade is being funded by sports betting accounts used by inmates to buy and sell anything from Viagra to heroin. Goulburn officers have admitted that the recent proliferation of sports betting companies has made it impossible to stop inmates from using wagering accounts to run a convict drug ring.

  ‘Basically the person you are buying it off will give you a TAB account number and you will get someone on the outside to transfer money into that TAB for you,’ said another Goulburn guard.

  Inmates in the New South Wales prison system are allowed to make several phone calls a day from a jail landline. They purchase the calls, at a standard rate, with a pre-paid phone card.

  ‘All they have to do then is call the TAB and log into their phone account,’ the officer continued. ‘From there, they go through the options and into the transfer section. They punch in the account of the guy they are buying it from, and they transfer the amount from their balance into the dealer’s account. The dealer will then phone into his account, make sure the money is in, and then he will pass on the drugs.’

  A spokesman for Tabcorp Holdings Limited, a government-approved company with 1.2 million regular customers and 310,000 active TAB Sportsbet account holders, who bet through the internet, telephone and pay TV, admitted the transactions would be almost impossible for police and other authorities to trace.

  ‘All they need is an account number and a pin to deposit money into someone else’s account,’ the spokesman said. ‘We wouldn’t even be looking at this, and the body that would is a government organisation called AUSTRAC [Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre]. I don’t think it would even register for them because they are mainly looking at money laundering and huge sums. They would not be concerned with the amount of money exchanged in single drug deals. Fifty dollars wouldn’t register anywhere; you would have to be talking deals in the thousands for it to be looked at.’

  News Corp Australia’s chief racing writer Ray Thomas said advances in technology and the loosening of legislation has seen a staggering proliferation in the number of betting companies operating in Australia. Inmates can use up to ten different companies to trade cash for drugs, with at least half of the operators based overseas and subject only to limited Australian law.

  ‘Australia was a bit behind other countries when it came to sports betting,’ Thomas said. ‘But it has gone through the roof in the last decade. The advent of pay TV and the fact you can access so many overseas sports was one of the main reasons for the boom in sports betting. Centrebet, first registered in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, in 1993, was the first company to take sports wagers. The TAB was next in 1998 when they began taking money on rugby league in New South Wales.’

  ‘It is a huge growth industry,’ Thomas continued. ‘Online betting, and the fact you don’t need a retail presence, has brought in huge offshore companies. They operate under different rules, and the TAB really struggled to compete because Australian laws hamstrung them. These overseas operators could put a market on two flies running up a wall. That is slowly changing with legislation freeing up the TAB to compete and open up more markets.’

  Thomas said authorities have limited powers when dealing with companies not registered in Australia.

  ‘There are about ten players, but it is difficult to say because a lot of them have recently amalgamated. William Hill [in the UK] sucked up a few of them in one fell swoop. It is changing all the time, but there are only a couple of Australian-based companies. Even Centrebet has been taken over by a company overseas. There would only be about five that are Australian-owned. That would make it very difficult for any type of policing because some of these offshore companies would be very hard to find. They could certainly trace transactions of an Australian-based company, but dealing with the offshore companies would almost be impossible.’

  Thomas also said the Australian racing industry has been a long-time target of criminals.

  ‘The racing industry has had some major problems with money laundering. On-track bookies don’t have a clue where the money is coming from; they just take the bets. The same with off-course and offshore operators; they will just take the bet. They don’t care where the money is coming from. It is an easy way of laundering money.’

  Goulburn officers concede they are powerless to stop inmates from using sports betting accounts to buy and sell drugs.

  ‘We are always finding little bits of scrunched-up paper in their cells,’ said an officer. ‘We open them up and find a bunch of numbers. They are account numbers that the inmate has used to buy drugs. We know what has happened and what the bits of paper mean, but unless we find the drugs, nobody gives a shit.’

  The prison officers send the information onto intelligence officers who, in turn, send it to police.

  ‘It wouldn’t be high on their list,’ said one intelligence officer, ‘because it would take a lot of work to get an arrest, and compared to something on the outside it would not be a big bust. We have tried to work with sports betting agencies, but they don’t care because it’s business. As far as they are concerned, it’s legitim
ate until proven otherwise. Every inmate has a TAB account and they’re allowed to have them. I have so many intel holdings on TAB accounts, but they don’t amount to shit. I mean, the bloke who walked out with nearly a million dollars? The drugs he sold probably had a street value of 200K, and he may have sold them over ten years. Why would the police try and investigate such a complex network to get a bloke selling 20K’s worth of drugs a year? They could pick up a school pot dealer and get the same credit. And the police looking at prisons … Well, they are looking at bike gangs and terrorism. All their resources are elsewhere.’

  Smuggling

  Most contraband in New South Wales is introduced into prisons by way of vagina, claimed a current Goulburn officer. He refers to it as the ‘smelly safe’.

  ‘Most of the stuff that comes into prison – drugs, phones, even weapons – comes in by way of a vagina,’ said another Goulburn officer who asked to remain anonymous. ‘They stick it up their vagina when they come through the screening. We can’t see it and the dogs can’t smell it. Once they are in they will take it out and put it in their bra before going to the visit. Then they will go to a machine, buy a bag of chips and stick it in with the crisps. She will offer her hubby the chips and he will pull it out and throw it down his overalls. From there he can work it down and push it into his arse. Or the inmate can simply pretend he is eating a chip and swallow it, if [the drug] is in a balloon or well wrapped up. There is no way we can detect it. You would be shocked by the amount of shit that gets in. It’s a huge problem, probably the biggest problem we have.’

  A can of Coke is also a smuggler’s tool of choice.

  ‘The women can just drop a balloon in the can once she has pulled it out of her “safe”,’ the officer continued. ‘Then all she has to do is give her man a sip and he can swallow the druggy bag.’