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After Elly Warren’s death, the Australian Federal Police did not send a senior official to Mozambique for almost seven years despite an early autopsy finding her death was a homicide.
Victoria’s state coroner is investigating the cause of the 20-year-old Melbourne woman’s death in Mozambique in November 2016, and the circumstances surrounding it.
The budding marine biologist, who was volunteering in the county, was found dead outside a toilet block in the beach town of Tofo.
The AFP has never formally opened an investigation into Warren’s death, and her killer has never been found.
AFP Commander of International Engagement Andrew Smith appeared before the three-day inquest on Wednesday, where he was grilled on the agency’s role in investigating her death.
He said when an Australian died overseas in suspicious circumstances, the AFP’s “starting position is always that where the crime has been committed is where it should be investigated”.
“We can’t just go into another country and start doing our own investigation,” he told the court.
Smith said the AFP sent Mozambique authorities emails and letters offering their assistance with the criminal investigation, but they did not respond.
“Without the full co-operation and support from law enforcement in the country, the role that we can play is very limited,” he said.
He said he visited Mozambique for the first time in May this year, a few months after Judge John Cain told the AFP to “move heaven and earth” to find answers for Warren’s family.”
That’s when a decision was made to have a senior-level presence,” he said.
Previously a superintendent detective from AFP had been sent to Mozambique, he said.
Smith met with investigating police and high-level officials, including Mozambique’s deputy director of prosecutions.
That is where he claimed he was told for the first time that police were investigating Warren’s death as a homicide.
But Paul Warren’s barrister Daniel McGlone showed the court a timeline, which revealed AFP shared a copy of a Mozambique autopsy report with the Coroners Court in February 2017.
The doctor who conducted that report had ruled Warren’s death as a homicide, he said.
Smith said the autopsy report was “a bit of a paper from a doctor” and would not have influenced the AFP’s decision to pursue an investigation as much as police deciding it was a homicide.
The inquest continues.
