Arrest warrant is the shock of Hughes’ new trial
A warrant has been issued for the arrest of the eminent historian and art critic Robert Hughes, who failed to appear in an Australian court to answer dangerous driving charges.
Mr Hughes’ lawyer said that the Australian-born critic, who still suffers injuries from the crash, was advised by an orthopaedic surgeon that he was not well enough to travel from his home in New York to Perth, where he was due to present himself before magistrates.
Mr Hughes, 64, has long been derided by scornful Australians as “the fatal bore”, after his most famous work, The Fatal Shore. But his transformation into one of Western Australia’s most wanted men is the latest twist in an extraordinary saga which began when he almost died in the car crash on a west-coast fishing trip three years ago.
The prosecution argues that Mr Hughes, who was also filming the BBC documentary Beyond the Fatal Shore at the time, was speeding and driving on the wrong side of the outback road when he collided with another vehicle.
The charges of dangerous driving and causing grievous bodily harm were dropped when two witnesses were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The witnesses, one the driver of the second car, had tried to extort £10,000 from Mr Hughes in exchange for false testimony. “It’s amazing what sort of low-life you can run into on the road,” Mr Hughes said when the case was dropped in May 2000.
Six months later the Australian supreme court ruled that the trial should be reopened.
Mr Hughes’ lawyer, Mark Andrews, said he was mystified by the prosecution’s pursuit of his client, who is internationally respected but in Australia shares the scorn many reserve for high-profile expatriates who criticise the country they have left.
“He’s no Christopher Skase,” Mr Andrews said, referring to the fugitive Australian businessman who evaded arrest for years in exile in Spain.
In a statement from New York, Mr Hughes said: “Let me make this quite clear: nobody has a greater desire to dispose of this matter than I. When I last appeared, voluntarily and without any compulsion, I was acquitted.”
Mr Hughes travelled to Australia last year for the funeral of his son, who committed suicide in the Blue Mountains.
The court has set another hearing date for July 4 to give Mr Hughes time to recover.
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SAS pair in WA court over ‘miscarriage plot’
Two Special Air Service soldiers have appeared in court following allegations they were involved in a plot to attack a woman and cause her to have a miscarriage.
The West Australian police organised crime unit has been investigating allegations that one of the soldiers, whose girlfriend was pregnant, was involved in a plot to recruit a colleague and others to attack the woman and cause a miscarriage.
The two soldiers, whose identities are suppressed, are due back in Perth Magistrates Court this month, when more charges are expected to be laid against a number of people. The two soldiers were charged last Tuesday. – the day before Prime Minister John Howard visited Western Australia to see three unit citations presented to the regiment.
One of the soldiers was in Perth Magistrates Court yesterday morning on charges of possessing an unlicensed firearm, unlicensed ammunition and a silencer. He has also been charged with conspiring to commit an indictable offence, but that charge was not listed yesterday.
The soldier’s lawyer, Mark Andrews, asked for a suppression order on the grounds that his client had been in the SAS for eight years.
Mr Andrews said the SAS had a strict policy relating to anonymity of its members. “There is a very real security risk if he is named or has his image published,” he said.
Chief Magistrate Steven Heath granted the order, stating: “If he was acquitted, the impact of publication would be such as to render his employment non-viable.”
Later in the morning, another SAS soldier appeared on a charge of conspiring to commit an indictable offence. He was represented by lawyer Vesna Amidzic and remanded for a committal mention in September. Ms Amidzic did not initially apply for a suppression order but she returned to court later to seek the order. Mr Heath made the suppression order and remanded the case to June 29.
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WA child psychiatrist on sex abuse charges
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Top cop’s injured son faces rehab
Russell O’Callaghan, 29, was badly burnt when a blast tore a hole through the roof of a state housing unit in Perth. He has been in hospital since the incident on March 20 and is in a stable condition.
After the explosion, which also injured five others, he was charged with attempting to manufacture amphetamine.
His first court appearance was yesterday in Perth Magistrates Court but he was excused from attending after his lawyer Mark Andrews presented a medical certificate.
Mr Andrews told the court it was not known when Mr O’Callaghan would be discharged from hospital but on his release he would go to a drug rehabilitation facility. He said a preliminary report from the state government chemist had shown that the lab would have produced only 1.2g of amphetamine.
“I don’t think anyone is suggesting that this was a sophisticated, commercial operation,” he told magistrate Giuseppe Cicchini.
To avoid a conflict of interest, a lawyer from the Director of Public Prosecutions, instead of the police, appeared for the prosecution yesterday.
Another man charged over the incident, Jason Lee Marzoli, also appeared in court and was granted bail on strict conditions, including a 12-hour curfew.
He lived in the home where the explosion took place and as part of his bail conditions is not allowed to return to the property unless he has permission from the police.
Both Mr O’Callaghan and Mr Marzoli are due back in court later this month.
Commissioner O’Callaghan has said he was shocked to see the extent of his son’s burns and he had come “within a hair’s breadth of losing his life”.
The incident led the commissioner to speak of the tension between trying to be a good dad and a good top cop.
“There’s always that conflict between being the Commissioner of Police and being the father,” an emotional Mr O’Callaghan said at the time.
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Robert Hughes faces arrest
The art critic Robert Hughes faces arrest if he steps on West Australian soil after he failed to appear in court on dangerous driving charges yesterday.
Perth magistrate Len Roberts issued the arrest warrant for Hughes, despite his claim that he was unfit to travel from his home in New York.
Outside court, Hughes’s lawyer, Mark Andrews, insisted his client wanted to return to clear his name. “He’s no Christopher Skase – he’s returned at great expense in the past,” Mr Andrews said of Hughes, the internationally renowned Australian critic.
And in a statement issued from New York last night, Hughes said: “Let me make this quite clear: nobody has a greater desire to dispose of this matter than I. When I last appeared, voluntarily and without any compulsion, I was acquitted.”
Hughes was charged with dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm, and dangerous driving causing bodily harm, after a head-on crash between his rental car and another vehicle south of Broome on May 28, 1999. He spent five weeks in a coma after the crash.
He appeared for his two-day trial in Broome in May 2000 but the charges were dropped after police were told the second car’s driver and a private investigator were conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Darren William Kelly and Rodney Stephen Bridge were later charged with trying to extort $30,000 from Hughes in exchange for giving false testimony or withholding testimony.
But the charges against Hughes were reinstated when the Director of Public Prosecutions successfully appealed against the Broome magistrate’s decision.
Mr Andrews said he now understood why Hughes feared he would not get a fair trial. He was perplexed about the vigour with which the prosecution was pursuing Hughes.
Mr Andrews said Hughes had never refused an order to appear in court and had kept the prosecution and court informed about his medical condition.
He had been advised by orthopaedic specialist David Helfet last month that he was currently unable to undertake the 24-hour flight from New York to Perth.
Dr Helfet’s report said Hughes’s leg, fractured in the accident, had not healed.
“He’s not going to return to WA against medical advice, regardless of whether a bench warrant was issued,” Mr Andrews said.
“There’s nothing they can do. Are they going to seek to extradite him from New York?”
Prosecutor Alan Sefton suggested the art critic be given time to recover before his next appearance.
“Let’s make it the 4th of July,” said the magistrate, apparently alluding to America’s Independence Day. “I think that’s appropriate,” Mr Sefton said.
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