The Egyptian refugee Sayed Abdellatif has been freed after almost 12 years in Australia’s immigration detention facilities.
Abdellatif was granted a temporary protection visa and released on Tuesday afternoon from Villawood detention centre before being driven by authorities to his family’s home in western Sydney.
Abdellatif arrived in Australia by boat in May 2012, seeking asylum with his wife and children. Australia recognised he had a well-founded fear of being persecuted and could not be forced to return to his home country.
But he was denied a visa on the basis of tainted security assessments and held in immigration detention, having been convicted in absentia in a discredited mass trial in Cairo in 1999 for offences he said he never committed. The evidence used against him was obtained under torture, and he said he had also been the victim of torture.
His wife and six children have lived in the Australian community for years.
Abdellatif was emotional as he was reunited with his wife and children, whose faces he had seen only during supervised approved visits to the high security facility during the past decade.
“My family and I are so happy and grateful. Our family is finally back together after so many years of being separated unnecessarily,” he said. “We’ve waited for this for a very very long time.”
Abdellatif was released a day before Muslim communities celebrate Eid, commemorating the end of Ramadan.
“I’m looking forward to living a simple and normal life and hopefully I will get to see and explore Australia’s beautiful nature that I heard so much about,” he said.
Abdellatif’s lawyer, Zali Burrows, said she was pleased he could “finally be with his family”.
“It has taken far too long and too many unnecessary battles have been fought. It certainly restores faith in human nature when you see the right decision is finally being made.”
Abdellatif’s case became a political controversy in 2012 when then opposition leader Tony Abbott derided him as a “pool-fence terrorist” – a reference to the low-security perimeter at Inverbrackie detention centre – in a bid to undermine the then Gillard government’s credentials on national security. Abbott wrongly claimed Abdellatif was a convicted terrorist.
An assessment by the inspector general of intelligence in 2014 found Abdellatif posed no threat to national security, and since then department officials have recommended to successive ministers that he be granted a visa to live in the community. That has been rejected until now.
The government has known from as early as 2015 that the evidence used to convict Abdellatif in 1999 – the basis for his detention in Australia – was discredited.
A briefing paper read and signed by then immigration minister Peter Dutton in April 2015, states documents in possession of the department “raise concerns about the legitimacy of the trial”.
“Translations of supreme military court documents and signed statements from witnesses indicate that the evidence used against Mr Abdellatif in the Egyptian trial was obtained under torture.”
His case has since spent years before the federal court.
In a 133-page federal court judgment in April 2022, Justice Debra Mortimer found the adverse security assessments made by Asio against Abellatif and used to block his claim for asylum were “legally unreasonable”, riddled with errors and denied him procedural fairness. She said the assessments should be set aside.
Mortimer criticised some of Asio’s interrogation techniques as “unreasonable and unrealistic”, including conducting an eight-hour, 700-question interview during Ramadan when Abdellatif could not eat or drink in daylight hours.
The government appealed and Mortimer’s ruling was struck down in the federal court, with Asio telling the court it held “classified information” it could not share with Abdellatif that formed the basis of his detention.
In July last year, Burrows was informed that Asio’s director general had made a “non-prejudicial assessment” in favour of Abdellatif, clearing him of adverse security assessments that formed the basis of his detention. But he was told by immigration officials last year he was unable to reapply for a temporary protection visa, previously rejected on security grounds.
