Australia’s High Court ruled that the government operated within its legal bounds in detaining 157 asylum-seekers at sea for a month in June 2014, reports the Bangkok Post.
The case was mounted by an unnamed asylum-seeker involved in the sea detention and currently being held, along with his family, at the detention camp in Nauru.
The plaintiff’s lawyers claimed their clients were falsely imprisoned on the ship.
The Bangkok Post reports that, under the court ruling, the Australian government was “entitled to hold the group of Tamils from Sri Lanka on a customs ship with a view to return them to India – where they had set out from.”
The 4-3 decision upheld Australia’s longstanding uncompromising immigration policies, cannot be appealed, and means the asylum-seekers cannot seek compensation for their month-long detention.
Chaninat and Leeds’ US Immigration Lawyers in Thailand have decades of experience assisting Thai nationals with the U.S. visa process.
“What’s been important through the case is that it brought this vital scrutiny, breaking the secrecy around our client’s detention,” the executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Hugh de Kretser, told reporters.
Read the full story here.
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