Mohammed Sagar

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Mohammed Sagar (born 1976) is a Shiite Muslim refugee from Najaf, Iraq, who has been detained on the island of Nauru since 2001.

In 2001 and 2002, 1,500 refugees from the Middle East and Afghanistan, seeking political asylum, tried to reach Australia in overloaded fishing boats. Intercepted by the Australian Navy, they were sent to Nauru and other Pacific islands under Australia's "Pacific Solution."

Since then, the other refugees have been repatriated, granted refugee status, or otherwise settled; in September 2006, the second-to-last of the refugees, Mohammed Faisal of Iraq, became suicidal and was evacuated to a hospital in Brisbane, Australia. Sagar, however, was judged both "a risk to national security" according to Australian intelligence, and a genuine refugee according to Australian immigration; he can therefore neither be sent back to Iraq nor accepted by Australia.

Additionally, Australian intelligence had declined to release the information used to judge Sagar a risk. Sagar was therefore unable to dispute the evidence in order to convince Australia or some other nation to accept him. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had also been unable to persuade any nation to grant him asylum.

Sagar set up a website, Refugees Left on Nauru, early in 2005. Its guest book recorded the support thousands of individuals from around the world, in contrast to the contrary comments from one disgruntled ex-employee of the company that supplied security services to the Nauru detention centre. Since Sagar's acceptance as a refugee by Sweden, and his move there during February 2007, the website has been archived and taken offline.

On November 3, 2006 the ABC reported that Mohammed Sagar, Muhammad Faisal and Scott Parkin won "the right to know why ASIO gave them adverse security assessments".[1] Thus Mohammed Sagar became one of the very few who have obtained information from ASIO before the end of the mandatory 30 year release period for ASIO File material, stipulated in Australia's Archives Act 1983.

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  1. ^ [1]"Deported activist, asylum seekers win access to ASIO files" ABC, November 3, 2006