Administrative Appeals Tribunal saves fake gay Christian from deportation

A MUSLIM Iraqi father who pretended to be gay, pretended to be Christian and claimed he would face persecution if he returned to his homeland can stay in Australia. This is despite a tribunal finding there was no substance to the convicted violent criminal’s claims.

A MUSLIM Iraqi father of seven who tried to avoid ­deportation by pretending to be a gay Christian has been ­allowed to stay in Australia.

The convicted violent criminal lied by claiming to Australian authorities his homosexuality and religious conversion would cause him to be him persecuted if he were returned to Iraq.

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Although the Administrative Appeals Tribunal recently found there was no substance to the man’s gay Christian claim, it still overturned a decision by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s delegate to ­deport the man.

Senior AAT member Peter Taylor, SC, did so despite the man — who the AAT has chosen to identify only as MAH — having racked up almost 30 convictions since arriving in Australia by boat in 1999.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has had his office’s decision overruled.

Those convictions include assault occasioning actual ­bodily harm and 14 of them ­occurred after then Labor ­immigration minister Chris Evans warned MAH in 2010 any future offending might result in his visa being cancelled.

Mr Dutton’s delegate cancelled MAH’s visa in December 2016, resulting in MAH being put into immigration detention when he was released from jail in February last year.

MAH — who has been ­receiving a disability support pension in Australia since 2014 — then appealed to the AAT to try to stop being deported.

Mr Taylor last week came to MAH’s rescue by revoking the ministerial decision and giving MAH his visa back.

Mr Taylor’s reasons for doing so included that if MAH were returned to Iraq he would be unlikely to be able to get the ongoing medication and monitoring his mental and physical health problems required.

Administrative Appeals Tribunal senior member Peter Taylor SC overturned a ministerial decision.

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The Herald Sun has previously also revealed the AAT:

HAS saved more than 80 ­murderers, rapists, paedophiles, armed robbers and drug dealers from deportation in the past eight years, despite delegates for Mr Dutton arguing the deportations were necessary to protect Australians.

LAST week overturned a decision by Mr Dutton’s delegate to kick Brazilian armed robber Pedro Fernandes out of the country because AAT deputy president James Constance ­believed that’s what “fair-minded” Australians would want him to do.

In his written March 7 ruling to overturn the decision to deport MAH, Mr Taylor, conceded “there is a very real and substantial risk that, once released from immigration detention, MAH would return to illicit drug use and to the offending that has been associated with it in the past”.

Mr Taylor said MAH’s offending spanned 15 years and involved a range of offences.

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