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Men jailed for murdering asylum seeker Reza Barati

AAP

AAP

Two men found guilty of murdering asylum seeker Reza Barati in Australia’s offshore detention centre on Manus Island have been sentenced to 10 years’ jail, with five of those years suspended.

With time already served, Joshua Kaluvia and Louie Efi will be released from prison in just over three years.

PNG’s National Court found the men murdered Mr Barati during a riot at the Manus Island detention centre in February 2014.

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The court heard Kaluvia hit the 23-year-old Iranian in the head repeatedly with a piece of wood with a nail in the end of it, before Efi dropped a large rock on Mr Barati’s head.

Sentencing trial judge Nicholas Kirriwom said the pair received a lower sentence because there were other people involved in the killing who had not been charged.

He also told the court his decision took into account that the prosecution relied on only one main witness.

A former Salvation Army worker, Kaluvia escaped from jail on Manus Island on March 28 but was recaptured just over two weeks later to face court.

Police had struggled to find Kaluvia when he was first named as a suspect in the case after his friends initially told them he was dead.

He was later arrested on the island of New Britain.

A Senate inquiry in December 2014 found the cause of the riot, which injured 70 asylum seekers, to be a failure to process asylum seeker claims, stating the violence was “eminently foreseeable”.

It also found the Australian government – which labelled the incident as a “disturbance” – failed in its duty to protect asylum seekers, including Mr Barati.

-ABC

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