Ananda Marga Trio
New South Wales, Australia
Date of Crime: February 13, 1978
At 12:40 a.m. on February 13, 1978, a bomb exploded outside
the Hilton Hotel on George St. in Sydney, Australia. The explosion
occurred during a prime ministers' conference attended by 12 prime ministers
of Asian and Pacific British Commonwealth countries. All were staying
at the hotel. The bomb had been placed in a trash bin in front of the
hotel and exploded after it was emptied into a trash truck. It killed
two trash collectors and a policeman who was standing in front of the hotel. It also injured eleven others.
Following the blast, police got an informant, Richard Seary,
to infiltrate a Hindu based religious group named Ananda Marga. Police
theorized Ananda Marga may have wanted to target the prime minister of India
because India had jailed its spiritual leader. Within three months
Seary was working in a soup kitchen run by the the Ananda Margis, feeding
homeless people. That same month, after telling police he would borrow
a car, Seary stole a car several blocks from police headquarters and picked
up Marga members Paul Alister, Ross Dunn, and Tim Anderson to engage in a
graffiti run.
The plan was to write graffiti on the fence of a right-wing
activist named Robert Cameron at his home in Yagoona. Anderson was
dropped off at a Marga center, but the other two continued with Seary until
Seary's car was pulled over by police and a bomb was found in the back seat. According to Seary they were planning to use the bomb to murder Cameron. Alister, Dunn, and Anderson were arrested and tried for the attempted murder
of Cameron. The trio's first trial resulted in a hung jury, but they
were convicted at their second trial. During the second trial Seary
helped to prejudice the jury by telling them that Dunn had confessed that he
bombed the Sydney Hilton. The trio were so closely associated with the
Hilton bombing that most Australians thought they were convicted of the
bombing. All three were sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment.
In 1983 the trio appealed their convictions to the Australian
High Court. Although the appeal was denied, Justice Lionel Murphy
opined that Seary was “one of the the most unreliable persons ever presented
as the principle prosecution witness on a charge of a serious crime.” Another Justice, James Wood, then conducted an inquiry into the case and
found 50 inconsistencies in Seary's testimony. In addition, evidence
was given that some years earlier Seary had tried to entice the Hare
Krishnas into blowing up the Homebush Abattoirs, a meatworks on the site
where Sydney's Olympic Stadium was later built. In 1985, the judge
pardoned the trio, although their convictions were not quashed.
In 1989, Anderson was arrested for the Hilton bombing. A
prison informant, Ray Denning, claimed Anderson had told him, “I did the
Hilton.” It was later shown that Denning was never in the same prison
at the same time as Anderson.
The day after Anderson's arrest a former Marga member named
Evan Pederick came forward and stated he had placed the Hilton bomb on
orders from Anderson. According to a record of interview, Pederick
said he made the bomb and that it contained 50 sticks of gelignite. Pederick's interviewer then prompted him to revise his figure to 20 sticks
of gelignite apparently after realizing that a 50-stick bomb was too big to
have been placed in the Hilton's trash bin. Pederick said that he
planted the Hilton bomb hours before the actual explosion. He then
said he stood across George Street with a remote control and tried
unsuccessfully to detonate the bomb as Australian Prime Minister Fraser
greeted Indian Prime Minister Desai in front of the hotel. However,
Fraser said he never greeted Desai at the George St. entrance to the Hilton,
but instead greeted him at the Pitt St. entrance. Also, George St. was
heavily photographed and videotaped in the hours before the blast, but no
one was able at to pick out Pederick as being present on the street. Thirdly, the trash bin in front of the Hilton had been overflowing for some
time and there was no space to place even a 20-stick bomb. Despite
hopes for an acquittal, Anderson was found guilty. Nevertheless, he
was pardoned many months later.
Evidence which surfaced over time showed that the Australian
Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had placed the bomb in front of
the hotel as a means of justifying its existence. ASIO was an
anti-terrorist organisation, but was beginning to be dismantled because
Australia did not have any terrorism. The bomb was a “fake” bomb that
had no working means of detonation. The police were alerted to the
bomb by anonymous phone call some minutes before it exploded. However,
before word of the bomb reached the hotel, trash collectors unexpectedly
came 20 minutes early and emptied the trash bin into their compactor truck. Although the bomb lacked a working detonator, its compaction in the trash
truck caused it to explode without one.
Following the blast police dumped the entire truck and all bomb fragments at
an unrecorded location to prevent forensic evidence from being gathered.
Testimony indicated ASIO had made two fake bombs in the week prior to the
bombing. During the prime ministers' conference the trash bins in front of
the hotel were never searched nor were dogs trained to detect explosives
allowed there. Police had refused to allow the bins to be emptied during
earlier attempts at collection, even though they were overflowing. All
attempts at investigating ASIO regarding the hotel bombing were thwarted.
Even a unanimous vote by the New South Wales parliament for an inquiry into
the matter was vetoed by the Federal government. [10/09]
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References: Wilson's
Almanac,
World
Socialist Web Site, Video
Documentary
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
Australia/New Zealand Cases,
Triple Homicide Cases
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