A fugitive who surrendered to Australian police because a Sydney lockdown left him jobless and homeless has been sentenced to an additional two months behind bars for escaping from prison almost 30 years ago.
Darko Desic has been back in custody since mid-September when he walked into a police station in the beach suburb of Dee Why and confessed to breaking out of Grafton Prison, 620 kilometres (390 miles) to the north, in 1992.
The 64-year-old pleaded guilty to escaping from lawful custody and was returned to prison to serve the remaining 14 months of a 33-month sentence for growing marijuana.
In Sydney's Central Local Court, magistrate Jennifer Atkinson said she had no alternative to imposing a prison sentence for escaping.
She added two months to his sentence.
The offence carries a potential maximum of 10 years.
She accepted that Desic had escaped because of "real fears" that he would be deported once his sentence was served to his homeland that was then known as Yugoslavia.
He feared he would have to serve in the military during the 1991-1995 wars that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Outside court, defence lawyer Paul McGirr told reporters Desic had recently received a letter from Australian Border Force informing him he would be deported once he was released from prison.
"Bearing in mind he doesn't have the same country left to go back to being Yugoslavia," Mr McGirr said.
"Hopefully someone with a bit of common sense looks at that."
It is not clear to which country Desic could be deported.
He is not an Australian citizen.
To escape prison, Desic, then 35, used a hacksaw blade to cut through cell window bars.
He found bolt cutters in a shed within the prison grounds and cut through a perimeter fence.
Desic then spent three decades in Sydney's fashionable northern beach suburbs near where he surrendered to police.
He committed no further crimes but had lived under a constant burden of not knowing when he might be arrested, Mr McGirr said.
His local community where he had worked as a handyman had grown to "love and respect" him, Mr McGirr said.
An outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant of coronavirus locked down Sydney from June 26 until October 11, drying up Desic's income and leaving him sleeping in sand dunes.
A public fundraising campaign had raised 30,000 Australian dollars (£16,300) in support of his legal costs bills and housing needs since his arrest, Mr McGirr said.
The magistrate said the decades that had passed since his last conviction established that he had changed.
"He clearly has made an important impact on the community," Ms Atkinson said.
Prosecutor Scott Williams said the case evoked a "romantic idea" of escape and asked for a full-time custodial sentence.
This was needed to ensure other prisoners contemplating breaking out knew they would be punished "no matter how long after escape when captured", Mr Williams said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here