A United Nations body has ruled Australia broke global human rights rules by denying a group of refugees a chance to challenge their detention.
In its most damning assessment to date of Australia's human rights record, the UN Human Rights Committee found 150 violations of international law around the federal government's infinite detention of 46 recognised refugees on security grounds.
It's labelled the cases cruel, inhumane and degrading and says their detention was arbitrary and broke the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
"Australia has clearly in our view violated its obligations under a treaty it freely entered into."
"Australia has clearly in our view violated its obligations under a treaty it freely entered into," said the Chairman of the Human Rights Committee, Sir Nigel Rodley.
The 46 people from Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Kuwait were recognised as refugees who could not be sent home, but were held in immigration detention after ASIO deemed them potential threats who should be denied visas.
"We found that Australia [was] detaining people without giving them a chance to know why, because they were detained on national security grounds and those grounds were not disclosed to them. [This meant] they were in no position to be able to refute them or respond to them," said Sir Rodley.
"[Ultimately we found] detaining them indefinitely so that they had no idea how long they were going to be in this legal limbo was a violation of the right to be protected from arbitrary arrest and detention. It constituted arbitrary arrest and detention," he said.
The UNHCR has ordered the federal government to release the refugees, who have been in detention for more than four years "under individually appropriate conditions".
It's also ruled that Australia provide compensation and rehabilitation for those who have been traumatised by the detention.
Sir Nigel Rodley said that the ruling highlighted the need for increased communication and transparency on behalf of ASIO decision making.
"The problem isn't that the treaty wouldn't take account of national security. The problem is that there was no way for the individual or for the lawyers to have any clue as to what it was that had lead to their determination as being a threat to national security and therefore they were not in a position to respond to it. Nor were they of course able to make representations that the response to that threat maybe didn't need to be detention."
"It's because it's all shrouded in mystery that the [UN] committee found that there was no basis on which not to find a violation," he said.
Sir Rodley says that even during the UN investigation, ASIO failed to provide clear details about the refugee's cases.
"The Australian government did not give the specific grounds. It gave the legislation that permits detention on a determination by ASIO that somebody's a national security threat. But there was nothing specific in respect of the specific individuals. We had no idea, and the individuals themselves had no idea, what specific problem they had that had come to the attention of ASIO," said Sir Rodley.
"If any government was simply able to say 'our security agency says this person is a national security risk, therefore we can bang them up indefinitely', then the whole piece of paper, the whole treaty might as well be torn up."
"If any government was simply able to say 'our security agency says this person is a national security risk, therefore we can bang them up indefinitely', then the whole piece of paper, the whole treaty might as well be torn up," he said.
Sir Rodley says all asylum seekers should have the right to challenge any ruling on their national security status.
"Why should they not? Why should they be any different from anybody else? They don't lose their human rights just because they're asylum seekers. They're precisely fleeing violations of human rights very often, so somehow the idea that they should lose their human rights as a result of fleeing from violations of human rights doesn't make too much sense to me," he said.
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