TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Well Lateline submitted 10 questions about Eyad's case to the Department of Immigration. In a written statement a spokesman said, "The department assists the PNG Government with anyone seeking to return from Manus Island to their country of origin, but does not comment on individual cases for privacy reasons."

TONY JONES: Ken Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch and he's been listening to that. He joins us now from New York.

Thanks for being there, Ken.

KEN ROTH, EXEC. DIR., HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Tony.

TONY JONES: Now, are you surprised the Australian Government would essentially deport someone like Eyad back to - who is claiming refugee status, back to a war zone like Syria?

KEN ROTH: I've got to say, I'm appalled. I just shuddered at the thought that they would actually fly somebody into Damascus Airport. I mean, coming from Manus, he may as well have a sign saying, "I'm an Assad opponent". And of course he lands and the intelligence service picks him up and starts torturing him. And we have thousands of photographs of people who have been tortured and killed in similar circumstances. And of course, coming from Daraa would also mark him as a likely opposition figure. So, it says something to first of all the despair of Manus. I mean, to think that somebody would choose, if that's the right word, to leave Manus to go back to the war zone and the detention and the torture of Syria, that says a lot for the conditions of Manus and the despair people must feel there. But also, I just don't get why Australia wouldn't bring him to Jordan or Turkey or one of the surrounding countries. There are four million refugees there. There was sort of this ideological step that, "No, we're not gonna bring him any place other than back to Syria." That just utterly appals me.

TONY JONES: Do you know of any other government in the world that would actually take this course of action?

KEN ROTH: Well I don't know of anybody else who is essentially taking asylum seekers and putting them in conditions so despairing that they do choose these options of likely death or a very serious possibility of death to return home. The people in Manus, a handful have been processed, but even the ones who are found to be legitimate asylum seekers, they've got no future. They go from the detention camp to the transit camp, but they basically are still stuck on Manus Island without the right to work, to go to school, to travel. It's a slightly larger prison, but still a prison. And in situations like that where they see no future whatsoever, no possibility of remaking their lives the way, say, the 500,000 refugees who have arrived in Europe this year are now able to do, of course you get this kind of despair. I think it's dishonest though for us to pretend that somebody chooses in those circumstances to return home. They leave in utter lack of hope. There's just nothing to live for on Manus, so they risk their lives back in Syria.

TONY JONES: Now Ken, you know the Australian Government's argument; it is that they refuse to allow anyone to resettle in Australia who's been brought here on a people smuggler's boater a people smuggler's vessel of any kind and their essential argument is that will stop the evil people smuggling trade. Now, what would happen if that method was used to stop people using people smugglers to go from Libya or some other part of North Africa or the Middle East in order to escape from Syria?

KEN ROTH: Well contrast it with what the European Union has done. They too have a boat problem. They too don't want people drowning at sea. It's disingenuous to say this is people smuggling. I mean, these are refugees, asylum seekers who pay to get help to leave their areas of persecution. What Europe has done is rather than detain everybody in situations of despair, they actually are actively patrolling the Mediterranean and they've decided to prioritise savings lives over defending their borders. And so if somebody leaves Libya and their boat begins to founder, they signal to the Frontex, the European Union border patrol agency, and they send a boat and pick them up, bring them to Italy, they get processed and ultimately they get to seek asylum. So, there is a much more humane approach to the problem of potential drowning at sea. We shouldn't pretend that this is a humane measure on Australia's part. This is just an effort to say, "We're not gonna have anything to do with this." And I recognise that Australia has now offered 12,000 positions to Syrian refugees from the region. That's still, on a per capita basis, is basically half of what the European Union is doing.

TONY JONES: And in truth, the very small number of Syrians who are in the offshore and onshore detention centres are not being offered the same opportunity to resettle here on the matter of principle. Let me take you, however, to this story of Eyad's, which is that when he - when he agreed to go back to Syria, what he intended to do on the way was to escape. He seems to have attempted to do that in Oman, the capital of Jordan and he was detained and given back to the Australian Immigration officials who then took him on to Damascus. Now, are you saying it was predictable that he would be treated badly by the Syrian intelligence when he arrived there?

KEN ROTH: Oh, it's completely predictable. I mean, first of all, as your journalist mentioned, Daraa was the heart of the revolution, so, anybody coming from Daraa Province is suspect to begin with in the eyes of the Assad regime. You then tack on to that: here's a guy who fled, he was in the West. If you're sitting in Syria, they don't really understand that Manus Island is a prison. He comes back with money. I mean, this is so suspicious from the perspective of Syrian intelligence and they don't think twice about detaining and torturing you and a large number of the people who are detained and tortured are tortured to death. There are literally thousands upon thousands of people - we have photographs - who have died in those circumstances. So, you know - I mean, I just - really, the thought of Eyad getting on the plane - and I don't think Australian agents brought him on that last leg. I think they detained him through Oman and then stuck him on a plane alone into Damascus, just left him to the fate of Syrian intelligence. Just - I mean, think of yourself in those situations. You know that the best you're gonna get out of this is severe torture and you easily could be executed.

TONY JONES: Now eventually he does - after 20 days, he says, he is released. He makes his way back to his town, which is in this hotly-contested Daraa Province, where he claims he's now living under - with his wife and small child under regular bombardment. Can you give us some idea - and including by barrel bombs. Can you give us some idea of what this province is like? How hot is this place he's been sent back to?

KEN ROTH: I mean, Daraa Province is one of the areas that the armed opposition is holding. And in areas like that, the Syrian Government basically responds not simply by targeting the soldiers, the combatants on the other side. They deliberately try to kill civilians who are living in that area. That is what has made this war so ugly. It's a war crime strategy of fighting in the war. And the principle tool that the Assad Government uses to target civilians are the so-called barrel bombs that Eyad described. And what they are, they basically are huge oil containers filled with explosives and metal fragments. They're dropped from helicopters hovering just above anti-aircraft fire area and they just kinda tumble to Earth and land with these huge explosions, spreading shrapnel widely. And I've talked to many Syrians who have lived under the threat of barrel bombs and they describe the absolute terror of those 30 seconds or so as the barrel bomb is tumbling to Earth, because when it first leaves the helicopter, you don't really know where it's gonna land. It always looks like it's gonna land on you. And it's the only last few seconds you realise it's gonna land someplace else, somebody else is getting killed. But these have just devastated neighbourhoods. They are anti-neighbourhood weapons. They hit hospitals, schools, markets, mosques and they're really the principle reason people are fleeing Syria today. And think of Eyad now: his only choice is to live under this threat of being barrel bombed.

TONY JONES: Yeah. You've actually made the case that more people are being killed by those means than are being - civilians, I mean, than are being killed by ISIS. Now ISIS probably does pose a far greater threat in the long run, but nonetheless, the numbers seem pretty stark.

KEN ROTH: Yes. I mean, ISIS is terrible. I'm no apologist for ISIS by any means. And we've all seen the videos of the horrible executions of ISIS. But the numbers that we're able to accumulate suggest that far more people are being killed by these aerial attacks, principally barrel bombs, other times rockets and missiles and the like. But if you look at why people are fleeing, why they're dying within Syria, the principle cause of civilian deaths by far are these regime air attacks and the principle tool are these dreadful barrel bombs.

TONY JONES: So is it clear to you that someone like Eyad fleeing from an environment like that, from a province where this is happening would have a pretty strong case to claim to be a refugee?

KEN ROTH: There is no question that this guy's a legitimate asylum seeker. I mean, Germany has basically said they'll take everybody from Syria because it's so awful. But even if there was any kind of individual assessment, you can just imagine that being a civilian resident of Daraa, the heart of the uprising, facing these daily barrel bomb attacks, I mean, of course you're a legitimate refugee, of course you should be given asylum. The European Union is recognising that and acting on that very generously. I can't imagine that any fair assessment, even in Manus, wouldn't have concluded similarly. The problem is: then what happens? If you're in Germany, if you're in Sweden, you get resettled, your kids get to go to school, you get to start working, you get to rebuild a normal life. The people who are - go to Australia are dumped in Manus. What do they get? They get to sort of - even if they're found to have had a legitimate asylum claim, they're stuck on Manus Island. They're not even allowed to go to the Papua New Guinea mainland. They're not allowed to work. Their kids, if they were with them, couldn't go to school. They can't do anything. They just rot. What kind of future is that? It's a future that is so despairing that somebody decides to go back to Syria.

TONY JONES: Ken Roth, that's all we have time for. We thank you very much for taking the time to come and talk to us tonight.

KEN ROTH: Thank you, Tony.