From the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday -
“Nine rejected asylum seekers forcibly repatriated by Australia to Afghanistan are believed to have been killed upon their return, and others were arrested or had family members killed, researchers who investigated the fate of the deportees say.
In one harrowing account, a Hazara Afghan deported after 16 months on Christmas Island and Nauru – despite his pleas that he and his family would be killed – lost his two children, aged six and nine. A grenade was dropped on their house four months after they returned to Afghanistan.
…Phil Glendenning, a director of the Edmund Rice Centre, said the nine deaths, during 2002 and 2003, were reported in interviews with rejected asylum seekers and were supported by church and health workers. The centre confirmed two of the names of dead asylum seekers, Mohammed Moussa Nazaree and Yacoub Baklri, with their families. It had to cut short its investigation in Afghanistan into the other deaths because Mr Glendenning and his two researchers were arrested by security police, and bandits later threatened their lives.
…Last night, the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said the centre had made similar claims before, but had refused to provide enough details to allow her office to investigate. Asked if she would investigate the cases of the two named people said to have died, she told the ABC’s Lateline: ‘I’ll have a think about that.’”