SYDNEY - A Kurdish-Iranian refugee is considering an appeal after unsuccessfully challenging his detention by Australia in hotel rooms for more than a year without access to sunshine and fresh air. The Federal Court of Australia has ruled that while it may not have been humane to detain Mostafa Azimitabar in such conditions, it was legal.
Azimitabar sought asylum after sailing by boat to Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean in 2013.
He was held in an Australian-sponsored immigration facility in Papua New Guinea for more than six years. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression, he was transferred to Australia for medical treatment.
The musician and artist had been granted refugee status but was held for more than a year in two hotels in the city of Melbourne that were being used as detention facilities.
He was released from detention in January 2021 and has challenged the legality of his incarceration in the Federal Court of Australia.
His case was rejected Thursday by Justice Bernard Murphy, who ruled the practice of using hotels for detention was legal. The judge, however, was critical of the authorities’ "lack of care and humanity, in detaining a person with serious psychiatric and psychological problems."
Azimitabar told reporters outside the court in Melbourne that he was considering an appeal to the High Court.
"It is not OK [for] someone who is suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] to be locked up in a room," he said. "But it is legal that a [government] minister open a building and put sick people inside [a] hotel and use it as a prison."
Australia’s hotel immigration system was highlighted the detention and deportation of Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic for breaching strict COVID-19 vaccination rules in January 2022.
Australia’s left-leaning Labor government has said that detaining migrants seeking asylum was "a last resort."
In June, the last group of migrants was flown from Australia’s controversial detention center on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru.
Josh Burns, a government lawmaker and chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the government is determined to treat asylum seekers with dignity.
"Our record in the first year of government has been to get people out of detention and whether it be to get every single person out of Nauru, which has already happened," he said. "There is no one there on Nauru or whether it has been to get people out of temporary visas, people who are languishing in the community for over a decade without any future ahead of them, they are all now on a pathway towards permanency."
Earlier this year, the Canberra government said that thousands of refugees across Australia who have lived on temporary visas for years would be eligible to permanently stay under new rules.
However, the government warned other asylum-seekers not to try to come to Australia by boat and said they would not be allowed to stay if they did.
Under Operation Sovereign Borders, the navy has been towing or turning away migrant boats trying to reach Australian waters since 2013.
The policy has been condemned by rights groups.
The Australian-financed detention center on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea closed in October 2017 after judges in the South Pacific nation said it was unconstitutional.
