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Immigration detention lawful but lacked humanity, judge rules
Although finding the hotel detention of a Kurdish-Iranian man was lawful, a Federal Court judge heavily criticised the detention he had to endure as lacking “thought, care and humanity”.
Naomi Neilson
Justice Michael Murphy found in favour of the Commonwealth after Mostafa Azimitabar, 37, launched a lawsuit about his detainment inside two Melbourne hotels for 14 months in 2019 and 2020.
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Following his reasons on Thursday morning (6 July), Justice Murphy said his ruling should not be “understood as my approving the immigration detention and what the applicant was required to endure”.
“I can only wonder at the lack of thought, indeed lack of care and humanity, in detaining a person with serious psychiatric and psychological problems in the hotels for 14 months,” he said.
“But the decision in this case does not turn on the humanity of the applicant’s detention; it is about whether the minister had the power under the act to approve the hotels as places of immigration detention and, therefore, to detain the applicant as he was.
“I consider the minister had (and has) the power to do so.”
Mr Azimitabar arrived on Christmas Island in July 2013 before moving to Manus Island the following month.
Six years later, Mr Azimitabar was assessed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and a major depressive disorder.
Mr Azimitabar applied to be transferred to Australia for psychiatric assessment and treatment and was placed in the Mantra Bell City Hotel in Preston and the Park Hotel in Carlton.
In January 2021, he was granted a bridging visa.
Mr Azimitabar argued the detention and the federal government’s expenditure to keep him locked up inside the two hotels was unlawful, and it was not permitted to establish a “de facto” detention centre.
In his judgment, Justice Murphy said Mr Azimitabar was kept in a third-floor hotel room with a window that only opened 10 centimetres.
He was only able to leave for meals in the basement.
“Anyone who endured even two weeks of hotel quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic would surely understand how difficult that must have been,” Justice Murphy said.
“As a matter of ordinary human decency, the applicant should not have been detained for such a period in those conditions, particularly when he was suffering from PTSD and a major depressive episode.”
