Jailed Rau's pleas of innocence unheeded

BRISBANE - Cornelia Rau told Queensland Government officials as early as June last year that she was innocent and should not be in jail, says a leading prisoner advocate.

Rau was incarcerated by immigration authorities in Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre on April 5, 2004, where she remained until she was transferred to Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia on October 5.

The Australian Government has announced an inquiry into her case after it was discovered Rau, who suffers from a mental illness, was an Australian resident and not an illegal German immigrant.

But leading prisoner advocate Debbie Kilroy, who founded the Brisbane-based Sisters Inside group, said Rau had told an inquiry established by Queensland's Corrective Services ethical standards unit that she was innocent.

The inquiry was investigating complaints made to the Anti-Discrimination Commission by Sisters Inside of systemic human rights breaches in women's prisons.

The commission is still investigating the complaint.

Kilroy said Rau - who went by the name of Anna Schmidt while in prison - was the sixth of 25 female prisoners to testify before the inquiry last June.

Kilroy, who accompanied Rau to the interview, said Rau had spoken at length about "how her rights were being abused and how she wasn't supposed to be in prison because she had done nothing wrong".

Kilroy said Rau had pleaded her innocence several times to her before the investigation.

"She would always preface her conversation with, 'I don't know why I am here, I shouldn't be here, I have done nothing wrong'," Kilroy told ABC radio.

"She would always preface her communication with us and anyone of our staff with that first, before she would then talk about how she was being treated and that her rights were being violated."

Since the inquiry, Rau had consistently written letters in English to Sisters Inside, expressing her anger at the violation of her rights in prison, including being held in isolation on several occasions.

Kilroy said the recorded interview should be submitted to the federal Government inquiry into the matter.

She further called for an open and public state inquiry into psychologically disturbed inmates in Queensland's prison system, saying jails were "dumping grounds for the mentally ill".

Acting Corrective Services Minister Robert Schwarten confirmed an investigation by the Anti-Discrimination Commission was underway and said the department was co-operating fully with that complaint.

He said the department was investigating whether Rau was one of the women interviewed in the departmental inquiry and said the information would be provided to the federal inquiry. Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said the closed-door inquiry into the detention of Rau would protect Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and fail to get to the truth.

The federal Government has appointed former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer to conduct the inquiry.

It will be held in secret, but its findings will be made public.

Labor and the minor parties have called for an open, independent inquiry with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence under oath and with legal protection for witnesses.

Rau's family has expressed disappointment the inquiry would be held behind closed doors.

Beazley attacked the Government's claim that the inquiry should be held in private in order to protect Rau's privacy.

"The family says they want an open inquiry, not a private inquiry, and the only person that's protected by that privacy is the [immigration] minister," he told the Nine Network.

"And the only thing we can be certain will come out of that is that the folk who appear before that inquiry are going to have all sorts of things at the back of their minds, their promotions, their relationships with their fellow staff members, the detainees, what the Government might do to their applications.

"They're going to have all that sort of thing in mind when they present their evidence and that means the evidence will not be full, it may well be to a degree tainted, and we will not arrive at the truth."

The Immigration Department has pledged to fully co-operate with the inquiry.

Immigration Department secretary Bill Farmer said the department would fully assist Palmer with his probe and had spoken with him about its co-operation.

Palmer had been told he would be able to have access to any staff and documents he regarded as relevant, Farmer said.

- AAP