Iranian overstayer taken into custody

1.00pm

Iranian overstayer Saied Ghanbari will spend his last days in New Zealand in a police cell after he stopped co-operating with the Immigration Service.

Ghanbari has lived in New Zealand for eight years, but went on the run for 18 months after exhausting all options to stay here. He surrendered himself to immigration officials on June 24.

He was to have left the country under a voluntary relocation agreement with Immigration, which meant he paid all fares and could choose which country he went to within a given timeframe.

But Ghanbari "ceased co-operating with the Immigration Service" when he left his Auckland home and stayed at another address, Immigration communications manager Kathryn O'Sullivan told NZPA today.

He would now be forcibly relocated.

Ghanbari was taken into police custody in Auckland because of concerns he would abscond again, she said.

She declined to give details of where and when Ghanbari would be sent, but it was understood he would be returned to his native Iran as early as tomorrow.

The date of his departure would depend on when flights and documentation for his escorts could be arranged, she said.

Ghanbari was fully aware of the conditions of his voluntary relocation and it was unclear why he had broken them, she said.

He has said he intends returning to New Zealand some time in the future to be with his wife and child.

Before surrendering, Ghanbari embarrassed Immigration authorities by being interviewed live on television from a secret location at the same time as Immigration Minister Paul Swain was being interviewed in the Beehive.

- NZPA