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'Use any passport and get out'
30/09/2003 08:33 - (SA)
Sydney - Australia's embattled immigration department was accused on Tuesday of encouraging unwanted asylum-seekers to use false passports to get out of the country.
Refugee rights advocates said they had received reports of six cases in which detained asylum-seekers claimed immigration officials suggested they obtain false passports so they could travel to other countries.
"They were in Australia at different times ... they are representing different nationalities, they did not know each other, they were in different parts of Australia, yet their stories are very, very similar," Phil Glendenning, a refugee activist, told ABC television.
In one case reported by ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, immigration officials allegedly promised an Iraqi national, Mushaal Abdul Matar, passage to Syria if his family could provide him with a false passport.
Fake Iraqi passport
The Herald published a photograph of the fake Iraqi passport Matar claims to have used to travel from Australia to Syria via Singapore and Turkey.
A spokesperson for the immigration department said the ministry had received no allegations of failed asylum-seekers using falsified travel documents to leave the country.
The opposition Labour and Greens parties called for an investigation into the allegations, the latest in a series of controversies involved the immigration department and its outgoing minister, Philip Ruddock.
"I think inquiries have to be made and an explanation has to be given to whether there is some sort of systematic problem within the Department of Immigration and under the minister's watch, or whether it's a one-off incident," Labour immigration spokeswoman Nicola Roxon said.
"It certainly looks more suspicious than that," she said.
Senator Bob Brown, the Greens' leader, said police should investigate the charges.
"It should be very swift, there should be no restriction on the investigation that takes place to get to the fact of the matter and if necessary clear the imputation that now hangs over the department of immigration in particular," he said.
The immigration department and Ruddock, architect of Australia's hardline policy of detaining all asylum-seekers, have in recent months been hit by many controversies, including allegations the minister intervened to obtain visas for big donors to the ruling Liberal party.
Prime Minister John Howard on Monday promoted Ruddock to the post of attorney-general as part of a cabinet reshuffle and the Labour Party suggested the move was motivated in part by a desire to quell the cash-for-visas scandal.
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