Eighty people, including convicted criminals considered dangerous, have been released from Australian migrant detention centers since the High Court ruled last week that their indefinite detention was unconstitutional, the immigration minister said Monday, A member of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority won freedom Wednesday when the court outlawed his indefinite detention.
, because he had been convicted of raping a 10-year-old boy, and authaorities consider him a danger to the Australian community. The court overturned a 2004 High Court precedent set in the case of a Palestinian man, Ahmed Al-Kateb, that found stateless people could be held indefinitely in detention. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said
is one of 80 people who had been detained indefinitely and have been freed since Wednesday's ruling. “It is important to note that the High Court hasn’t yet provided reasons for its decision, so the full ramifications of the decision won’t be able to be determined,” Giles told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We have been required, though, to release people almost immediately in order to abide by the decision,” he added.
in that no other country would accept them. “The more undesirable they are ... the more difficult it is to remove them to any other country in the world, the stronger their case for admission into the Australian community — that is the practical ramifications” of outlawing indefinite detention, Donaghue said.
came to Australia in a people smuggling boat in 2012. He had been in detention since January 2015 after he was charged with raping a child and his visa was canceled. Ian Rintoul, Sydney-based director of the Australian advocacy group Refugee Action Coalition, said it was unclear on what basis detainees were being released. One detainee from the restive Indonesian province of West Papua has been in a Sydney detention center for 15 years and has not been freed, Rintoul said.