A refugee with a history of violence faces deportation from Australia after losing an appeal over his sentence for a brutal assault that left a man with a severed ear.
Jok Gar, 21, was sentenced last December to two years in prison, with a non-parole period of 16 months for the unprovoked attack, where he and another man savagely beat a man in Melbourne and stole his phone. .
In the attack on September 6, 2022, a knife was used, the victim’s face was cut and his earlobe was partially cut.
Gar and his co-accused Tyler De Silva left the man unconscious and bleeding, and were discovered by police in the toilets at Southern Cross train station at 4.30am.
De Silva received a lighter sentence, six months, for having an intellectual disability (he has an IQ of 48), childhood epilepsy and “issues of gross neglect” in his education, the court said. Geelong Advertiser reported.
Jok Gar (pictured), a refugee with a history of violence, faces deportation from Australia after losing an appeal over his sentence for a brutal assault that left a man with a severed ear.
Gar’s appeal cited “glaring” differences between the two sentences, but Supreme Court Justices Karin Emerton and David Beach said Gar’s initial sentence had been “lenient.”
The judges said the attack was “both dangerous and callous”, and was “not the applicant’s only act of random violence against a stranger on the streets of Melbourne”.
They also said there was “no reason to believe that (Gar’s) prospects for rehabilitation are anything other than very poor.”
A decision on the case was reserved following a hearing on April 16, but in the meantime Gar was told that his refugee visa, which he received in 2009, had been cancelled.
His lawyers said the visa cancellation and the risk of deportation after serving his sentence behind bars were grounds for another appeal.
But the judges disagreed and said Gar can still request that the visa cancellation be reversed.
“We see no good reason to reduce (Gar’s sentence) on the basis that visa cancellation will make the applicant’s incarceration more burdensome,” Justices Emerton and Beach wrote.
The judges also cited Gar’s history of violent crimes.
In January 2023 he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault of a woman in Geelong West, and four months later, in May, he was found guilty of attacking a stranger “without provocation” in Melbourne’s CBD in the early hours of the day. New Year 2022.
Gar’s appeal to the Supreme Court (pictured) failed, with Justices Karin Emerton and David Beach saying his initial sentence had been “lenient”.
That assault caused fractures to the victims’ skulls and facial bones.
Gar was admitted to prison as a medium security prisoner but has been reclassified as a maximum security prisoner due to his behavior in prison, which has involved assaults, fights, verbal abuse and spitting on guards.
He also “stomped on another prisoner” and poured milk and urine under another prisoner’s cell door.
Gar was born in Egypt to Sudanese parents and came to Australia when he was six years old.
