Australia deports its highest-profile asylum seekers

ADELAIDE - Australia's highest-profile asylum seekers, the Bakhtiari family, were being deported today after a failed four-year legal battle to stay in the country.

Ali and Roqia Bakhtiari and their six children are being deported to Pakistan, after exhausting all avenues in their bid to secure refugee status in Australia.

The family claims to be Afghani but the government says they are from Pakistan.

Catholic welfare agency Centacare director Dale West said security guards took Mr Bakhtiari out of Baxter detention centre at 1am (3am NZT) today.

His wife and children were simultaneously removed from a nearby housing project in Port Augusta, where they were placed on December 18 after being removed from their housing placement in Dulwich.

"My understanding is they were taken to the Port Augusta airport and they were flown out from there.

A federal government spokeswoman said Mr and Mrs Bakhtiari and their children -- ranging in age from one to 16 -- were being deported today.

"I can confirm that the removal is currently under way," the Department of Immigration and Multi-cultural and Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman would not reveal the current whereabouts of the family or whether they had already been removed from Australia.

She would also not confirm whether a chartered plane or commercial flight was being used to deport them.

The Bakhtiari family was thrust into the media spotlight when Alamdar and Muntazar Bakhtiari escaped from the Woomera detention centre in 2002 and sought asylum at the British Consulate in Melbourne while on the run.

The teenage boys took their case to the Court of Appeal in London.

They argued British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw breached the European Convention on Human Rights when he failed to protect them from inhumane and degrading treatment at the hands of Australian immigration authorities.

They failed in their appeal.

Mr West said the practice of deporting families at night was not unusual.

"They have been the public face of the way people are treated in our detention system and people don't realise that one o'clock in the morning is the standard approach," he said.

"With the tragedy of the tsunamis, it's good timing for a government who wants to do it as privately as possible."

The Bakhtiari children were released into Mr West's care between August 2003 and June this year.

"I am very concerned for their wellbeing," he said. "They have been very brave children right up until the end.

"The trauma for them over the last four years has been extreme."

Mr West said many of the family's friends and supporters had appointments to visit them and now they have been denied a chance to say goodbye.

Justice for Refugees South Australia chairman Don McMaster said the department's deportation of the Bakhtiaris over the Christmas holiday period was a ploy to avoid media coverage.

"It's doubly distressing for them because one, they don't want to go to Pakistan, and the way it is being done is very cloak and dagger," he said.

"It's not a very good Christmas present for the Bakhtiaris. They would be very distressed about it -- they don't want to go to Pakistan."

- AAP