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Exiles: judgement reserved
25/06/2008 16:04 - (SA)
Pretoria - Judgment was reserved in the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday in an urgent application by the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum (ZEF) to stop the deportation of 33 MDC supporters.
The ZEF applied before Acting Judge T Sapire for the urgent release of 14 members of the group they claimed were being illegally detained at the Lindela holding facility in Krugersdorp.
The forum also asked the court to force home affairs officials to issue all of them with permits in terms of the Refugees Act.
The permits will identity them as asylum seekers and prevent their deportation until the final determination of their asylum applications and any appeals.
The ZEF plans to launch an application to declare various aspects of home affairs' policy with regards to asylum seekers unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid.
Lawyers for Human Rights is assisting the applicants, who were arrested during a protest action outside the Chinese embassy in April.
The 33 applicants, all members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, were among a group of Zimbabweans protesting against the deployment of a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe.
They were taken to Lindela after their arrest, where they were allegedly forced to sign deportation notices.
Counsel for the applicants, Linda Hofmeyr, on Wednesday argued that it was unlawful to detain asylum seekers pending the final outcome of their applications.
She said it was also unlawful to release and immediately re-arrest them because of a lack of documents in order to circumvent the legal requirement that persons could not be detained for purposes of deportation for longer than 30 days without an arrest warrant.
Hofmeyr said the home affairs department was sanctioning "indefinite detention" without judicial sanction with this practice and the so-called release was a subterfuge.
Home affairs contended that it had acted perfectly legally in terms of the latest court rulings and interpretation of the applicable legislation.
The department insisted that the applicants had in any event not exhausted all of their internal remedies, and could not come to court until they had done so.
Sapire did not indicate when he would give judgment in the matter.
- SAPA
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