Australian government's detention of 157 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers ruled legal

MELBOURNE: In a victory for its tough anti-immigration policy, the Australian government's detention of 157 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers on the high seas for a month last year was legal, a court ruled here today.

According to 'The Age', a 4-3 majority decision was announced today afternoon.

The High Court ruling found that the asylum-seekers were lawfully held by Australian authorities on the Customs vessel Ocean Protector and the asylum seekers, who are now in Nauru, were not entitled to any compensation.

Defence lawyers for the asylum-seekers had earlier argued that the government could have sent the group straight to Australia or Nauru once they were rescued from their boat which had suffered a pump failure 16 nautical miles off Christmas Island on June 29.

However, according to the judgment, the Customs vessel then sailed to India, where the asylum-seekers were believed to have departed from, under the direction of the national security committee of cabinet, which included then immigration minister Scott Morrison.

With no agreement on the asylum-seekers to be able to disembark in India, the passengers were then detained for a "further period" until the minister decided that it was "not practicable" to discharge the asylum-seekers, instead sending them to Cocos Island.

They were detained for a month on the boat where they were allowed only limited hours of daylight before eventually being transferred to the offshore processing centre in Nauru.

Following the judgment, the new Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the government's actions had been "vindicated".

"I am pleased with the result and obviously there's a 157-page judgment that the government will now consider in detail," Dutton said.

In its ruling the High Court said the detainment was lawful under the Migration Powers Act, which enables maritime officers to detain a person outside Australia.

Defence team of the asylum seekers called the outcome "disappointing".

"It took this case for the government to finally break its secrecy and confirm that it was detaining 157 people - including 50 children as young as one - on a boat somewhere on the high seas," said Hugh de Krester from the Human Rights Law Centre.

"If it hadn't been for this case, the Australian public may never have known what happened to those 157 people," he said.