Media Release
Wednesday January 31, 2007 1:30pm WST
For Immediate Release
No Embargoes

"The fact, that now, after five years and yet another "security threat ASIO assessment", Nauru imprisoned refugee Muhammad Faisal is suddenly granted a permanent protection visa, while it is welcome, provides serious grounds to raise very, very serious doubts about the quality and reliability of ASIO's threat assessments," WA Rights group Project SafeCom said this afternoon.

"Twice, or even more than twice, ASIO had concluded that Mr Faisal, as well as the only other Iraqi man held on Nauru, Mohammad Sagar, could not be granted the refugee status he had already been accorded, for access to and life inside Australia, because the two men were deemed a security threat."

"Now, it appears, Mr Faisal is suddenly no longer a security risk. What's the problem exactly here," spokesman Jack H Smit said, "has ASIO now become the same department of idiots who bungle assessments when it concerns refugees, as the Department of Immigration has been for so long?"

"Please, before the hundreds of 'Senior and Junior and Cadet Minions' working in this important bureaucracy, that's now shaped by John Howard's morals and policies as its Overlord, a Department that has the former Immigration Minister and dried-up cold-hearted Attorney-General as its other Chief, stuff up one more time - with terror threats and the safety of Australians at stake, let's be more sane and have all decisions of this Department, ASIO, independently reviewed and scrutinised," Mr Smit said.

"We need an independent ASIO Ombudsman, we need ASIO come out of its secretive closet, and we need them to become accountable to the Australian people. We pay for their jobs, we do not pay or want to pay for their stuff-ups," Mr Smit concluded.

For more information:

Jack H Smit
Project SafeCom Inc.
[phone number posted]