Sydney, October 01: A blast on a people-smuggling boat that killed five asylum seekers off north-west Australia earlier this year was caused by arson, police said Thursday.
The explosion ripped through the boat carrying 47 asylum seekers and two Indonesian crew on April 16, shortly after it had been intercepted by an Australian Navy vessel at Ashmore Reef.
Authorities have previously refused to speculate on how the blast occurred but Northern Territory police said on Thursday a five-month investigation had concluded an asylum seeker set fire to petrol in a bilge pump.
“(It) was lit by one or more persons,” assistant police commissioner Mark McAdie told reporters.
“What we can’t do is identify who did it.”
McAdie said it was unclear whether those who started the fire meant to spark the explosion that killed five Afghan asylum seekers and injured dozens more.
He said that despite an exhaustive investigation involving 200 witnesses and 20,000 pages of transcripts, no one had been identified as the arsonist, so no charges could be laid.
McAdie went out of his way to praise Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel, who have faced accusations they kicked refugees scrambling for safety off their launches and back into the sea.
“It appears on the evidence that is available to us the personnel involved on the ground behaved professionally, most especially when it comes to the evacuation of the injured persons from the scene,” he said.
The treatment of refugees remains a sensitive issue in Australia after the previous conservative government incorrectly accused asylum seekers of throwing children into the sea to avoid capture by the Navy in 2001.
The government has promised to release all video and photographs of the Ashmore Reef incident following the allegations against the ADF, which were reported in the Australian newspaper last month.
However, it says that cannot be done until a coroner’s inquest into the deaths is completed.
–Agencies