Steve Pratt

Stephen George "Steve" Pratt (born 15 October 1949) is an Australian former military officer, aid worker and Liberal politician in the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly for the electorate of Brindabella.

Pratt spent the late 1990s working for the foreign aid organisation CARE Australia. Prior to that, he had a 23-year career as a Military Officer in the Infantry of the Australian Army, seeing service throughout the Asia/Pacific region. He worked in dangerous front-line locations including Rwanda, Cambodia, Zaire, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, as well as in Yemen, Jordan and Kenya, managing up to 32 international aid workers and 2000 local staff. In 1993 and 1994 Pratt worked as a senior manager in northern Iraq alongside the UN dealing with the humanitarian problems that followed the Gulf War. He and his colleagues came under fire from Ba’athist Fedayeen as well as religious extremists.

Allegations that Pratt used the cover of humanitarian work to undertake spying activities for the United Nations in Northern Iraq during 1992 and 1993 were published in The Sunday Telegraph of 11 April 1999. Reportedly, Pratt's activities became known to the Iraqi Government and a price was apparently placed on his Head. He quickly left Iraq in 1993. These allegations were later found to have been inadequately verified by the Australian Press Council.

In 1999 whilst evacuating Yugoslavia, Pratt and fellow Australian Peter Wallace and Yugoslav Branko Jelen, were arrested by Yugoslav authorities and accused of spying for NATO and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Pratt was forced to make a video taped confession, which was broadcast worldwide. After spending 5 months of a 12-year sentence in jail in Yugoslavia, he was released in September 1999 by former Serb Leader, Slobodan Milosevic after appeals for clemency.

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