In August 2024, 22-year-old Sudanese-born Ariek Lual and five others assaulted two Australian Defence Force members outside a Toowoomba kebab shop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One soldier suffered a broken jaw and missed work for six weeks; the other had a severe concussion with a week of amnesia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Judge Benedict Power sentenced Lual to two years’ probation, 200 hours of community service, and $1,000 compensation per victim, accepting character references that called the attack out of character for the aspiring disability support worker from a respected family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court heard he has “potential to be a leader” in his community, and aspires to be an NDIS support worker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nA gang of Sudanese thugs bashed two off-duty Australian soldiers outside a Toowoomba kebab shop \u2014 broken jaw, severe concussion \u2014 and the ringleader received only 2 years’ probation. He was not jailed for attacking our troops, received no conviction, just 200 hours of community service and a pathetic $2k in compensation. Not deported. Still here on a temporary visa. If we can\u2019t even protect our own soldiers from this imported garbage on our streets, why the hell should they risk their lives protecting us?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The no-conviction outcome, which spares his visa status for now, drew sharp online criticism questioning protections for soldiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One soldier suffered a broken jaw and missed work for six weeks; the other had a severe concussion with a week of amnesia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":402115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,35,921],"tags":[20042,20043,12019],"class_list":["post-402113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-breaking-news","category-crime","tag-ariek-lual","tag-judge-benedict-power","tag-toowoomba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=402113"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402119,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402113\/revisions\/402119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/402115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=402113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=402113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=402113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}