Iranian cleric loses battle to stay

IRANIAN sheik Mansour Leghaei will be deported to his homeland within six weeks

NEWS: Sheik Mansour Leghaei is an Iranian Sheik who has lived in Australia for 16 years but is now being deported following a ASIO investigation. Pictured at Sydney University.

IRANIAN sheik Mansour Leghaei, who has lived in Australia for the past 16 years, will be deported to his homeland within six weeks after Immigration Minister Chris Evans decided not to overrule ASIO's adverse security assessment of the Muslim cleric.

While his wife and four children have been granted permanent residency visas, Dr Leghaei, cleric at the Shia Imam Husain Islamic Centre at Earlwood in Sydney's southwest, must leave Australia by the end of next month, with or without his family.

Yesterday the sheik said he was "very disappointed" that Senator Evans had chosen not to intervene in his case, and described ASIO's allegations that he carried out "acts of foreign interference" as "baseless".

"As I have made it very clear -- and I think that my 16 years of peaceful life in Australia is my best evidence -- I have never and I will never be any risk to any individual," Dr Leghaei said.

"I know myself I don't have any links to any political parties, Iranian parties or any other parties. I'm not a political person."

Dr Leghaei has exhausted all legal avenues in his bid to stop his deportation, but his lawyer, Ben Saul, said that if the Australian government deported the sheik within the next six weeks, it would be breaching its international human rights obligations.

Dr Saul said that last month the UN wrote to the Australian government requesting the sheik not be deported before the UN had completed its own investigation into the possible violation of Dr Leghaei's human rights over the ASIO assessment of 1997.

A spokesman for the Immigration Minister said last night that Senator Evans was aware of the request from the UN, but still expected Dr Leghaei to leave within six weeks. "The government is giving careful consideration to the matters raised in the (UN) request and will respond as soon as that consideration is complete," the spokesman said.

"It is the government's expectation that Dr Leghaei will now comply with the minister's decision and depart Australia of his own accord."

Dr Leghaei remains unaware of any details of the allegations made against him by ASIO, as the agency is not required to reveal them under laws governing national security.

Dr Saul said in Britain, the US and Europe, a person given an adverse security assessment "is at least given the bare bones of the allegations (against them)".

"All the sheik has ever received is a letter accusing him of being a national security risk and he has got no basis on which to assess that claim," Dr Saul said.

Dr Leghaei entered Australia on a temporary business visa in 1994 and the following year was granted a temporary visa on the basis that he was a religious worker. His application for permanent residency was rejected in 1997 on the basis of an adverse security assessment by ASIO that he had carried out "acts of foreign interference".

However, a translation relied upon by ASIO of a so-called "jihad notebook" that the sheik brought into Australia from Iran -- which he said were notes made when he was a religious studies student -- was subsequently found to be inaccurate.

Yesterday, Dr Leghaei said that during his 16 years in Australia he had developed close ties with a wide cross-section of the local community.

Senator Evans said his decision not to intervene in the cleric's case was made "in the national interest, because Australia's national security must always be paramount".