From Nine MSN.

RSL hostel ‘unsuitable for neo-Nazi’
Wednesday Sep 21 20:22 AEST

A plan to allow the head of the neo-Nazi Australian Nationalist Movement to stay in a veterans’ hostel while he awaits trial on charges of plotting to firebomb Chinese restaurants has been rejected by justice officials.

Jack van Tongeren, 58, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiring with others to firebomb Chinese restaurants in the Perth suburbs of Willetton, Karawara and Ferndale between June 1 and July 16 last year.

Vietnam veteran van Tongeren was refused bail by a District Court judge earlier this year and remains in custody, 13 months after his arrest and with no date yet set for his trial.

After another bail application was made in WA’s Supreme Court earlier this month, Justice Lindy Jenkins ordered a report into whether home detention was a possibility.

But on Tuesday a report from Western Australia’s Department of Justice said a suggested address for van Tongeren, at an RSL hostel in the Perth suburb of Maylands, was unsuitable because it could have a detrimental effect on its residents.

The suburb also had a high number of Asian residents, the court was told.

Sally Chadwick, a senior community corrections officer for the Department of Justice, said she had interviewed van Tongeren, and said he had consistently refused psychological testing and medical treatment while in jail.

“Mr van Tongeren is a man who has his own perceptions, and has maintained those views unfalteringly over the past 20 years,” Ms Chadwick said told the court.

Van Tongeren’s lawyer Tom Percy, QC, had earlier told Justice Jenkins that van Tongeren should be released on bail because he otherwise faced more than two years in jail before his trial.

Justice Jenkins adjourned the bail hearing, so other possible venues for a home-detention order could be investigated.