Lifting The Lid On The Spying Game

The Age

Monday March 4, 2002

Lindsay Murdoch

Many people in Kupang, the seedy port capital of Indonesian West Timor, thought Australian Kevin Enniss, or ``Mr John" as he was better known, was a people smuggler.

He would drink at the waterfront Teddy's bar with dozens of Afghan and Middle Eastern asylum seekers waiting for boats to take them to Australia. He would throw parties for them at the house he owned in the town. Once, he even had 29 Afghans sleeping on his floor for two weeks.

``How could people think anything else?" Mr Enniss said.

``That is what I did for a living. It was my job to know everything that was happening in people smuggling: when the boats were going, who arranged them, who was on them." he said.

``Sure, many people thought I was a people smuggler and I never tried to make them think otherwise. But I am not a people smuggler nor have I ever been one."

Two weeks ago, Channel Nine's Sunday program accused the 46-year-old Mr Enniss of running a people smuggling racket while receiving $25,000 of taxpayers' money as an informant for the Australian Federal Police.

But Mr Enniss, formerly from Tasmania, operated a secret intelligence network with Indonesian police that stopped hundreds of asylum seekers from reaching Australia during 2000 and last year, according to senior police in Australia and Indonesia.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has defended Mr Enniss in a Senate Estimates Committee meeting in Canberra, saying his work saved Australia $22.5million, the estimated cost of processing and assimilating into Australian communities the 451 asylum seekers he was responsible for stopping.

While the identities of Australian informants are always kept secret, Channel Nine's revelation that he was one has lifted the lid on the life of a spy working in a highly dangerous environment overseas.

Mr Enniss, a knockabout former Darwin-based fisherman, was shot at and smashed in the face with a tyre lever in Kupang at the height of boat departures to Australia.

He was almost always accompanied at night by at least two Indonesian intelligence police officers with whom he developed a close working relationship.

During interviews with The Age in Bali, Mr Enniss produced computer files revealing the identities or telephone numbers of more than 600 people involved in people smuggling in Indonesia, from the heads of six major syndicates to local fixers and boat crews.

Police in Indonesia describe him as an ``encyclopaedia" on people smuggling in the country where up to 5000 asylum seekers remain stranded, desperate to reach Australia.

Mr Enniss has obtained the only photographs of many of the smugglers, some of whom have long criminal records.

``The Australian police are handicapped by having to always deal with the Indonesians through official channels," he said. ``The bureaucracy made it hard for them. But the police in Kupang were genuine in wanting to stop boats going to Australia and to arrest the smugglers. I was able to work with them unofficially every day. We effectively closed down their operation."

Top-level police investigations in Indonesia, launched following Channel Nine's claims, have failed to produce any evidence that Mr Enniss arranged boats to take asylum seekers to Australia.

The head of the national police in Kupang, Brigadier General Jacky Ully, told The Age last Friday that ``this guy Kevin was hit by rumour that he was involved in people smuggling".

``But so far we have not got any evidence that indicates his involvement whatsoever."

``On the contrary, we are aware that he was actually helping the Australian Federal Police on people smuggling activities," he said.

``We used the information provided by the Australian Federal Police to search for boats and stop them leaving illegally."

Brigadier-General Gorries Mere, the deputy head of Kupang police during most of the time that Mr Enniss lived in the town, also vouched for him during an interview in Jakarta last Friday.

General Mere said Mr Enniss was a valuable source of accurate information on people smuggling.

``You see government officials, including some police officers, are involved directly or indirectly in many ways in people smuggling business," said General Mere, who is now the head of Indonesia's anti-drug division.

``That's probably why he got himself into trouble. Maybe some officials were looking for him because the information he provided had caused them difficulties and discomfort in carrying (on) their involvement in the smuggling business," he said.

In the mid-1990s, Mr Enniss became bored with operating fishing boats in Darwin. He decided that he wanted to live in Indonesia, a country he already knew well after marrying a Kupang woman.

Mr Enniss bought two fishing boats, planning to export fish caught in the waters off West Timor. He says he was lent a total of $250,000 by two Adelaide men.

But at the start of 1998 he had a falling out with the men, who claimed they had lent him much more and claimed ownership of the boats.

Mr Enniss said his business ambitions collapsed on June 22, 1999. Three or four policemen took him into custody.

Eighteen hours later the Adelaide men lodged complaints with a police official relating to ownership of the boats that included fraud, misconduct and stealing. The two men were to later accuse Mr Enniss of being a people smuggler on the Sunday program.

It was during the next six months while he was in jail, Mr Enniss said, that he befriended three asylum seekers, who gave him information about a people smuggler who owed them money.

When Mr Enniss was released from jail in December, 1999, he telephoned Australian police based in Jakarta, who expressed immediate interest in the smuggler.

``I needed a way to pay my living costs and the offer of rewards for information leading to the capture of people smugglers attracted me," he said. ``I started to get close to the asylum seekers who were wandering around town.

``They led me to the syndicate heads and others down the line. Over time I learnt more and more and kept feeding the information to the AFP."

``There are not too many people willing to put their necks on the line. But it was a way for me to survive, waiting for the court to bring down its verdict. And I got so wrapped up in the effort to stop the boats that I found it very rewarding."