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Australia appeals against payout for British-born paedophile

Tuesday, 05-Aug-2003 2:00AM PDT
    
Story from AFP
Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)

SYDNEY, Aug 5 (AFP) - Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said Tuesday he had launched an appeal against a 116,000-dollar (75,400 US) payout awarded to a British-born child molester for wrongful imprisonment.

The immigration department had moved to deport British national Graham Taylor, 43, in 1999 after he had served more than two years for child sex offences.


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But rather than keeping him in an immigration detention centre where children were also housed, the department put him back in jail while deportation proceedings were under way.

A Sydney judge ruled last December that the 316 days Taylor spent incarcerated while awaiting deportation was wrongful imprisonment and him awarded compensation.

The judge accepted that Taylor was constantly worried the other inmates might discover he was a child sex offender and threaten his life.

The ruling was highly criticised at the time.

Government lawyers are expected to argue that immigration officers did not break the law because they had the right to detain someone under a reasonable suspicion they were "an unlawful citizen".

In a separate case, the High Court ruled Taylor could not be extradited to Britain because, although not officially an Australian citizen, he had lived in the country since he was seven years old.

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