Australian sentenced to life in Philippines for ‘illegal recruitment’

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Singapore: An Australian has been sentenced to life in prison in the Philippines, with a court finding him guilty of “illegal recruitment” a decade after he was first detained.

Former mining executive Troy Birthisel, 54, was arrested while attempting to fly to Singapore with his Filipino girlfriend and six other women. He has been incarcerated at Lapu-Lapu city jail in Cebu province since 2013.

After a trial which took years to reach its conclusion amid prolonged delays, the Queensland father of six was on Friday found guilty by a judge of the crime of illegal recruitment involving economic sabotage in a large scale. He was handed a life sentence.

Troy Birthisel, 54, was arrested while attempting to fly to Singapore with his Filipino girlfriend and six other women.Credit: Fairfax Media

Birthisel had pleaded not guilty and maintained his innocence throughout the trial, insisting he and his girlfriend had merely been accompanying the women – who had not travelled overseas before – to Singapore to undergo psychometric testing for hospitality work.

Contacted at the prison on Tuesday, he said he was too shocked with the outcome to comment, referring this masthead instead to his Philippine lawyer Albert Lulu.

Birthisel was not physically in court for the verdict and sentencing but appeared by video link, said Lulu, who indicated he would mount an appeal to a higher court in Cebu.

“We were anticipating, of course, a not-guilty verdict and to our surprise and our dismay it went the other way,” Lulu said. “I would say he is deeply down-hearted. He is sad. He’s been in prison for so long and he’s no longer that young.

“But he is trying to be calm and focused because the battle is not yet over. I know that inside of him he knows we have better chances in the upper court. We respect the court’s decision but we vehemently disagree with it. That is why we are taking it to the higher court.”

The Australian’s lawyer said Birthisel’s girlfriend, Lovely Modina, had also received a life sentence and they had been fined 2 million pesos ($48,000).

According to Carlos Isagani Zarate, a legal expert and former congressman in the south-east Asian nation, prisoners sentenced to life usually served between 30 and 40 years, the maximum.

Birthisel, who is from Gladstone, had formerly been a safety and training adviser at Rio Tinto and had just started as vice president of health and safety at the Jakarta-headquartered mining company PT Asia Mangan Group, in Indonesian West Timor, at the time of his arrest.

Philippine authorities originally suspected the couple engaged in human trafficking for the sex industry after the six women were stopped at Mactan-Cebu International Airport, having earlier tried to fly to Singapore from Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.

Those charges were dropped and Birthisel was put on trial for breaching the country’s Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995.

According to court documents, his legal team argued the prosecution had found no link between Birthisel and the supposed would-be employer of the women, Hospitality Staff Asia, while four of the women recanted statements given to investigators, saying they had been pressured to provide evidence against him to have their passports returned and had been afraid.

“Evidence on record would aptly show that [the] accused was not instrumental in the supposed travel to Singapore. Neither did [the] accused persuade nor influence any of the private complainants in their decision-making,” Birthisel’s lawyers argued, based on documents summarising the case for his innocence. “Private complainants were already set to travel even before [the] accused came into the picture. As such the notion of transferring, transporting and harbouring [the women] has to be illogical and absurd.”

The court was also told that Birthisel had cleared immigration and was in the pre-departure area at the airport before returning by choice to assist the women when they were pulled up by officials.

“Troy was already in a safe haven, he came back to rescue them, to ask the authorities what particular requirement was missing [to depart the Philippines] and [said] they were ready to comply,” Lulu said on Tuesday. “It showed some good faith but the court looked at it differently.”

The lawyer said the punishment was also out of proportion with the crime.

“I think there is really something wrong with the law itself. It’s too harsh of a penalty,” he said. “It’s just recruitment. It’s nothing like murder or trafficking at the end of the day. The act of recruitment should not take you to jail for your entire life.”

As for the painfully slow trial itself, he said waiting 10 years and four days for the verdict had been devastating for Birthisel.

“I’ve not even been a lawyer for 10 years… to put things into perspective. I’ve only been a lawyer for seven years,” Lulu said. “This case started way before I even became a lawyer. It’s longer than my career itself.”

The Australian embassy in the Philippines had helped support Birthisel in jail during the past decade including by paying his legal fees, Lulu said.

Attempts to contact the court in Lapu-Lapu on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

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