CANBERRA, Australia: A 64-year-old fugitive walked into a Sydney police station to give himself up almost 30 years after he used a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters to escape from prison, police said on Wednesday.
Darko Desic decided to go back to prison because Sydney’s COVID-19 lockdown made him jobless and homeless, media reported.
Desic surrendered at Dee Why Police Station at Sydney’s fashionable northern beaches on Sunday morning and was denied bail when he appeared in a downtown court on Tuesday charged with escaping from lawful custody in 1992, a police statement said. The charge carries a potential seven-year prison sentence.
Sydney’s lockdown, which began in June, had cost Desic his cash-in-hand work as a laborer and handyman, unnamed police sources told Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph and Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“He slept on the beach on Saturday night and said: ‘Stuff it, I’ll go back to prison where there’s a roof over my head,’” a source told the newspaper.
Desic was 35 when he escaped from a century-old prison in Grafton, 620 kilometers north of Sydney, over the night of July 31-Aug. 1, 1992.
Police allege he used tools including a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters to cut through his cell window bars and a perimeter fence.
He had served 13 months of a three-and-a-half-year sentence for growing marijuana.
Born in the former Yugoslavia, Desic told police he escaped because he thought he would be deported once he had served his sentence, the newspaper reported. He feared he would be punished for failing to do his compulsory military service in his former country, which has since broken into several nations.
Desic told police that he had spent his entire time at large at Sydney’s northern beaches in the suburb of Avalon, and according to the newspaper, had never come to the attention of police in that time.
Desic maintained a low profile but was once mentioned on “Australia’s Most Wanted,” a true crime TV program that ran for a decade until 1999, after someone reported seeing him at Nowra, 190 kilometers south of Sydney.
Beach boy no more: COVID-19 forces Australian fugitive to give up seaside life
https://arab.news/gtbuk
Beach boy no more: COVID-19 forces Australian fugitive to give up seaside life
- Darko Desic spent his entire time at large at Sydney’s northern beaches while at large
- But he decided to go back to prison because the lockdown made him jobless and homeless
Dutch couple’s marriage annulled due to ChatGPT speech
- The pair said “I do” and the officiant declared them “not only husband and wife, but above all a team”
- The judge found that they had not actually sworn to fulfil their marriage duties
AMSTERDAM: A Dutch couple had their marriage annulled after the person officiating used a ChatGPT-generated speech that was intended to be playful but failed to meet legal requirements, according to a court ruling published this week.
The pair from the city of Zwolle, whose names were redacted from the January 5 decision under Dutch privacy rules, argued that they had intended to marry regardless of whether the right wording was used when they took their vows.
According to the decision, the person officiating their ceremony last April 19 asked whether they would “continue supporting each other, teasing each other and embracing each other, even when life gets difficult.”
The pair said “I do” and the officiant declared them “not only husband and wife, but above all a team, a crazy couple, each other’s love and home base.”
But the judge found that they had not actually sworn to fulfil their marriage duties — something that is required under Dutch law.
“The court understands that the date in the marriage deed is important to the man and woman, but cannot ignore what the law says.” It ordered the marriage removed from the Zwolle city registry.
