Six more missing Sierra Leonean athletes surface

SYDNEY - Six missing Sierra Leonean athletes, illegally in Australia after their Commonwealth Games visas were revoked, received bridging visas yesterday after presenting themselves to immigration officials in Sydney.

The six were among 14 athletes from the war-scarred West African country who went missing from the Commonwealth Games athletes' village in Melbourne last week, provoking stern criticism from sports authorities and athletes back home.

Of the group, which represented two-thirds of the country's 21-member team, 12 have now surfaced and been granted bridging visas pending any official request to stay in Australia.

"We can confirm a further six missing members of the Sierra Leone Commonwealth Games team have been located in Sydney. The six athletes have been granted bridging visas allowing them to lawfully stay in Australia," said an immigration official.

Six compatriots were found by police on Monday in a Sydney beachside house and also granted bridging visas.

One of the athletes, 19-year-old Hassan Fullah, told Australian television he feared being killed like his 12-year-old brother if he was forcibly returned to his impoverished homeland, which was racked by a brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002 that claimed around 50,000 lives.

But Sierra Leone's director of sport Saidu Mansaray dismissed Fullah's statement as a ruse - along with comments by a female athlete saying she feared forced female genital mutilation, or circumcision, should she return home.

He said circumcision, while still practised by some traditional communities, was usually carried out on children meaning adult women returning home were not in danger.

"They have done this only because they think that they can easily achieve greener pastures in Australia, or after Australia in Europe," Mansaray said.

"So what they have been telling the world is no excuse for them not to come home," he told Reuters in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown.

Thirteen athletes remain missing after the Commonwealth Games ended in Melbourne on Sunday -- two more Sierra Leoneans, nine Cameroonians, a Tanzanian and a Bangladeshi.

Games visas given to athletes do not expire for another month, but Australia revoked the special visas of the 14 missing Sierra Leone athletes, making them illegal immigrants.

Prime Minister John Howard has warned potential defectors that Canberra would not give widespread asylum to athletes who went missing from visiting sports teams. Australia has some of the toughest policies in the world against illegal immigration.

There were similar disappearances by Sierra Leonean athletes at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England, in 2002.

High jumper Quintin Salia-Konteh, who competed in those games for Sierra Leone, denounced the athletes who had disappeared as "a disgrace to the entire people of Sierra Leone and especially the youth of our young country to gain international recognition in sport".

- REUTERS