World Socialist Web Site
29 April 1999
The strange case of two Australian aid workers detained in Yugoslavia
By Mike Head
When Yugoslav authorities detained two Australian aid workers at the Croat=
ian
border on March 31, on suspicion of spying to aid the NATO bombing blitz, =
the
affair rapidly became the subject of furious denunciations by the media an=
d
politicians in Australia, accompanied by frenzied diplomatic activity to s=
ecure
their release.
Amid headlines such as "Spy outrage: Aussies guilty before a trial," Austr=
alian
Prime Minister John Howard demanded the pair's immediate release. Former p=
rime
minister Malcolm Fraser, now chairman of CARE Australia, the agency that
employed the two, flew to Geneva, Budapest and Moscow and eventually trave=
lled
to Belgrade as a Special Envoy in an effort to secure their return. Every
conceivable dignitary was enlisted to add voices of protest, including UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Australian Governor-General William Deane, G=
reek
government ministers and various Orthodox clergy.
The official and media furore intensified after one of the pair, former Ar=
my
major Steve Pratt appeared on Yugoslav television on April 11 confessing t=
o
supplying intelligence information. "When I came to Yugoslavia I performed=
some
intelligence tasks in this country, using the cover of CARE Australia. My
concentration was on Kosovo and the effects of the bombing," Pratt said.
"I misused my Yugoslav citizen staff in the acquisition of information. I
realise that damage was done to this country by these actions, for which I=
am
frankly sorry. I always did and I still do condemn the bombing of this cou=
ntry."
As media reports conceded, Pratt bore no obvious signs of physical mistrea=
tment
and spoke calmly and clearly, beginning by stating his name and citizenshi=
p and
listing the countries he had previously worked in--Yemen, Iraq and Rwanda.
RTS, the Serbian state television, announced: "In a coordinated action, Yu=
goslav
security forces have broken up a network of agents headed by Major Steve P=
ratt.
Under the cover of the humanitarian organisation CARE International, this =
person
collected before [NATO] aggression on our country, intelligence data on mi=
litary
and police movements, and after the aggression, on the effects of the bomb=
ing."
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer described this charge as "sim=
ply
preposterous". Newspaper columnists accused the Belgrade regime of "bully-=
boy
tactics", "ghoulish" behaviour and international lawlessness. Without both=
ering
to offer a skerrick of evidence, the Australian's international editor Gre=
g
Sheridan declared that the duo had suffered "an obviously brutal interroga=
tion,"
adding that this was a "throwback to the crass communist behaviour of the =
Cold
War".
The Milosevic regime was accused of attempting to use the two men as hosta=
ges to
blackmail the Australian government into dropping its support for the NATO=
air
war.
This week a somewhat different picture began to emerge. With Malcolm Frase=
r in
the lead, the language emanating from official and media sources became le=
ss
categorical. Fraser returned to Australia empty-handed and admitted that P=
ratt
and his assistant, Peter Wallace may have given the Yugoslav administratio=
n
cause for suspecting their bona fides. Fraser claimed that Yugoslav offici=
als
might have misunderstood Pratt's military-style speech mannerisms and the =
extent
of the records that he and Wallace were attempting to take out of the coun=
try.
"Steve has a military background," Fraser said. "Instead of saying, you kn=
ow,
'Is this road clear, can we get our trucks through,' (he might say) 'get m=
e some
intelligence about that road'." Fraser said the CARE workers might have be=
en
"na=EFve" to try to cross the border with CARE's extensive files, includin=
g
"lengthy situation reports". He also admitted that the men, with whom he w=
as
granted a special access meeting in Belgrade, were in reasonable physical
health.
A day after Fraser's comments, CARE Australia and CARE International offic=
ials
effectively downgraded the campaign to end the pair's detention, foreshado=
wing a
new "low-profile" phase. Graham Miller, CARE's chief in Switzerland, who
accompanied Fraser to Belgrade, withdrew to his Geneva office. Antony Robb=
ins of
CARE International returned to London from Budapest, where Pratt's wife li=
ves.
Where this affair will lead over coming weeks and months is not clear. But=
from
the outset there were numerous inconsistencies in the official Australian =
story
that Pratt and Wallace were purely innocent humanitarian workers assisting
refugees in Serbia and Kosovo.
In the first place, the circumstances of their effort to flee Serbia via L=
ipovic
on the Croatian border were dubious. With them they had a satellite phone =
and
other telecommunications equipment, four laptop computers, extensive repor=
ts on
the situation on the ground in Serbia and Kosovo and files of thousands of=
names
and contact details, ostensibly of refugees. The full scope of these recor=
ds has
not been revealed.
Pratt and Wallace had set out at 6am from Belgrade's Hyatt Hotel in two UN
vehicles, supposedly travelling to Montenegro by the most indirect and
unfathomable route imaginable--via Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Macedonia a=
nd
Albania. Along the way, after speaking to a Sydney Morning Herald reporter=
on a
mobile phone, they changed their plans, seemingly in response to roadblock=
s, and
set off for the Croatian border.
Until 1.30am the previous evening, Pratt and Wallace had been giving phone
interviews to the Western media, including American radio stations. They w=
ere in
demand, because they had been in a unique situation to know first-hand abo=
ut the
flows of Kosovar refugees and the impact of the NATO bombing. Pratt, 49, h=
ad
headed CARE's operations in Belgrade, while Wallace, 30, had been in charg=
e of
its work in Kosovo.
Hours before he left Belgrade, Pratt gave an interview to the Sydney Morni=
ng
Herald in which he described himself as a "student of politics, of
geo-politics". He claimed to have taken the job as CARE's director in Yugo=
slavia
because, "The politics of the Balkans had long interested me. I wanted to =
know
what it was about this place that made it so explosive." Wallace told the =
Herald
he had gone to Yugoslavia at Pratt's invitation after they met and worked
together in northern Iraq.
In other words, Pratt recruited Wallace. It soon became apparent that Prat=
t had
an interesting history. For 23 years--almost his adult life--he had been a=
n
officer in the Australian Army, specialising in logistics. Upon leaving th=
e
military in 1992 he immediately turned up in one of the world's most
strategically sensitive and volatile regions, working as a "logistics
consultant" in Yemen, before joining CARE to work in Kurdistan in northern=
Iraq.
There he was suddenly forced to leave the country, taking a CARE post in a=
nother
hotspot, Rwanda, before arriving in the Balkans.
Pratt's mother, Mavis, told the Sydney Sunday Telegraph on April 11 that h=
er son
had supplied the UN with information about Iraqi forces during the Gulf Wa=
r. "He
was letting the UN know what Iraq was doing--he was observing--so Iraq put=
a
price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly."
A few days later it became known that Pratt's predecessor as head of CARE
Australia in Yugoslavia was another military officer, former colonel Tony =
McGee.
McGee admitted that two years ago he had been threatened with expulsion fr=
om
Yugoslavia because the authorities suspected him of spying. McGee said CAR=
E had
a computer data base of thousands of refugees and an extensive information
gathering network, but insisted these were used solely to monitor refugee
movements. He also revealed that Pratt had been his deputy, first in Rwand=
a and
then in Yugoslavia.
On April 16, some media outlets decided, belatedly, to unveil another pecu=
liar
feature of Pratt's biography. In 1989-90 he took leave from the Army to st=
and as
the Liberal Party candidate for the Sydney seat of Banks in the federal el=
ection
of 1990. He was associated with the most right-wing faction of the Liberal=
Party
and closely aligned himself with John Howard, now the prime minister, who
personally campaigned on Pratt's behalf. Pratt championed strong conservat=
ive
views, advocating compulsory national military service for school leavers.
By this stage, certain newspaper pundits began to admit that Pratt would h=
ave
difficulty in dispelling the impression that he was a spy. "As an Australi=
an aid
worker, Pratt is just the sort of person whom NATO intelligence services w=
ould
approach to become an agent," wrote Brian Toohey, a veteran observer of th=
e
security agencies, in the Sydney Sun-Herald on April 18. Toohey noted that=
the
Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the country's overseas spy
agency, has previously acted for the US in countries where CIA agents migh=
t have
difficulty operating, such as Chile before the 1973 US-backed military cou=
p.
Like its American and British partners, ASIS is known to depend heavily on
information gathered from agents, as well as full-time officers. To use ev=
eryday
parlance, agents are part-time informers--people such as aid workers, busi=
ness
people, trade union officials and journalists, who are well placed to gath=
er
data in sensitive locations. In the past ASIS agents have included a hotel=
owner
in Dili, East Timor, on the eve of the 1975 Indonesian invasion, and UNSCO=
M
weapons inspectors in Iraq. The American CIA has a well-documented record =
of
using the US Agency for International Development and the Peace Corps as c=
over
for its operations. Both the CIA and ASIS also use informers as "agents of
influence," actively intervening into political developments or implementi=
ng
provocations and other "dirty tricks" projects.
Fresh evidence of how Australian authorities use aid workers as informers
emerged on April 23, when a former AusAID team leader in East Timor told t=
he
Melbourne Age he had warned embassy officials as early as June last year t=
hat
the Indonesian army was arming and training pro-Jakarta militia groups. La=
nsell
Taudevin, who administered a water and sanitation project from June 1996 t=
o
February this year, said it was made clear to him that he was expected to
provide information on security to Australian officials in Jakarta.
He gave the Age copies of e-mail messages he sent to the embassy that incl=
uded
details of Indonesian troop arrivals and warnings of growing violence. He =
said
AusAID pulled him out of East Timor because he was considered to be alarmi=
st and
biased toward the East Timorese secessionist movement.
As is to be expected, AusAID and the Howard government vehemently denied t=
he
evidence. An AusAID representative insisted that Taudevin was never asked =
to
spy, while Downer's spokesman said it was a "completely nonsensical" sugge=
stion.
Nonetheless, Downer's staff member said it was "only natural" that embassy=
staff
would talk to Australians in an effort to ascertain what was happening on =
the
ground.
In Yugoslavia, for all the claims of high-tech surveillance capability, th=
e
US-NATO commanders have been unable to obtain a clear aerial or satellite =
view
of the bombing damage and refugee and troop movements in the often mountai=
nous,
thickly forested terrain. Hence the need for observers on the ground.
The Yugoslav government has announced a judicial review into the case of S=
teve
Pratt and Peter Wallace, and has allowed a lawyer to visit them. The full =
extent
of the evidence against them may never be released. They may stand trial o=
r a
deal may be struck to release them. Nevertheless, one thing can be said wi=
th
certainty. Whether they supplied information to Australian or NATO authori=
ties
or not, their activities gave the Yugoslav administration sufficient groun=
ds to
detain them.
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