Despite the damning revelations of the Inspector-General\u2019s report into ASIO and the AFP\u2019s handling of the detention of Egyptian asylum seeker, Sayed Abdellatif, the Minister for Immigration has still not allowed him to make an application for a protection visa.<\/p>\n
Sayed, his wife and six children have been held in immigration detention for almost two years. For the last eleven months, Sayed has been separated from his family inside the Villawood detention centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no excuse for the delay, \u201d said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, \u201cThe Immigration Department found that Sayed and his family had a prima facie case for protection on 9 July 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn September 2012, a submission was made by the Immigration Department to the Minister to allow Sayed to apply for protection. But the report says \u2018there is no record of the Minister reading the submission\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncredibly, Sayed has been held in detention for 18 months because the submission \u2018was misplaced within the Minister\u2019s office.\u2019 Minister Morrison now has another submission, but there has still been no decision.”<\/p>\n
“This is just a form of extra-judicial punishment,” said Ian Rintoul, \u201cNeither ASIO nor the AFP showed any interest to follow up court documents and other evidence that showed the allegations made against him by the Egyptian government were fabricated. The AFP not only took months to make translation of documents but also didn\u2019t bother to hand those translations to Immigration or ASIO.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, Wednesday 19 March, when Sayed asked his Villawood case manager why he was still separated from his family and why the Minister had still not allowed him to make a protection claim, his case manager told him that \u2018nothing had changed\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe report makes it quite clear that Sayed has been the subject of politically driven decisions. The family was moved from Inverbrackie to Villawood, only when Sayed\u2019s case manager was alerted that there was about to be media coverage of his case.<\/p>\n
\u201cSayed and his family have been the victims of bumbling unconcern at the hands of Immigration, ASIO and the AFP. The Minister can now rectify some of the injustice inflicted on the family, by re-uniting them, allowing them to apply for protection visas and releasing them from detention.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite the damning revelations of the Inspector-General\u2019s report into ASIO and the AFP\u2019s handling of the detention of Egyptian asylum seeker, Sayed Abdellatif, the Minister for Immigration has still not allowed him to make an application for a protection visa. Sayed, his wife and six children have been held in immigration detention for almost two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}