Socrates
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Continued.....
In a café at Sydney's central station, with the help of another man, Hussain set up a meeting with agent Mahdi Afsoon Avwaz, who claims to be 20 and is originally from Iran. Hussain posed as a relative of family members wanting to come to Australia by boat. Four Corners filmed the meeting from a nearby balcony. "Mahdi Afsoon, he's a smuggler, but he was an agent for one of the biggest smugglers in Indonesia. Around two years he worked with him and his name Mohammad al Basrawi," Hussain said. Mohammad Basrawi was Captain Emad's partner; they sent Afsoon to Australia by boat in 2010. Iranian Afsoon was accepted as a refugee later that year. He told Hussain how many passengers he had brought to Australia since then. "Madhi Afsoon, he told me that he bring around 300 passengers to Australia including his family. And he told me that the last boat he organised before two week or three weeks ago arrived in Australia and a boat was carrying 57 passengers - Iraqi and Kurdish - and three crew," Hussain said.
He told Hussain the cost of the trip for his relatives would be $11,300 each. Afsoon rang the smuggler based in Australia about the best way to handle the money. The smuggler he rang was Captain Emad. "He called him and he let me hear his voice and he open a speaker and he discussed with him about the trip and the passenger and the money," Hussain said. "Captain Emad, he was very careful about the phone Mahdi Afsoon [was] using because he asked him in first question, what the kind of your mobile phone? It is iPhone? He told him no.
"[Madhi] he said, if you pay today or tomorrow, I'm ready at any time and we have already trip at 15 days, maybe two weeks or twenty days there will be move[ment]."
Captain Emad's caution and cunning have protected his operations since he arrived in Australia. The relatives of the 97 passengers who disappeared in 2010 are still waiting for the smugglers to tell them what really happened to the passengers.MThe people smugglers who sent the boat lied about the loss of lives to collect final payments from relatives.
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