CANBERRA - Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews has defended the government's handling of a security assessment which kept an Iraqi man in detention on Nauru for five years.
Muhammad Faisal, 27, was released by authorities yesterday after spy agency ASIO reversed its original adverse security assessment of him.
MrFaisal had been transferred from the remote Pacific island to a psychiatric facility in Brisbane late last year because of concerns about his mental health.
The decision leaves only one man in immigration detention on Nauru, Iraqi Mohammad Sagar, who had also been given an adverse security assessment by ASIO.
The men's lawyer, Julian Burnside, has blasted ASIO, calling for a public explanation of its backflip.
But Mr Andrews, who was sworn in as the new immigration minister on Tuesday, said due process was followed.
"We always have to be assured that people coming to Australia are of good character and they're not a risk to our national security," he told ABC Radio.
He denied that the process surrounding Mr Faisal's security assessment was unnecessarily long.
"I don't believe so, but let's put this back in the context," he said.
"This was somebody who was coming to Australia by a means which raises suspicions as to why he was coming to Australia.
"We've had a long history over the last few years of people smuggling, a long history of people seeking to jump refugee queues, a long history of people trying to come to Australia in untoward ways of which we must be very careful."
Both men were found by the immigration department to have genuine fears of persecution if they returned to Iraq, but the ASIO ruling over-rode those concerns.
Mr Sagar is set to leave the Pacific island nation soon, after Sweden formally accepted him as a refugee.
