A Sudanese asylum seeker has been forcibly removed from Melbourne immigration detention after a standoff between protesters and police in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The man, given the pseudonym Waleed, was taken by border force guards, and Victorian and federal police. The van taking Waleed to Melbourne airport was followed by friends and refugee rights activists who physically blocked the entrance to gate 24 at the back of Melbourne airport, and then surrounded the van when it stopped, preventing police from reaching Waleed inside.

After a standoff over several hours, officers removed Waleed and put him on a cargo plane. It is understood he will, initially at least, be flown to Christmas Island, but advocates and his legal team are concerned he will soon be moved offshore again, probably back to Manus.

Video of Waleed being removed by police in the early hours of Tuesday.

Waleed had been formerly detained on Manus Island but was brought to Australia for medical treatment. His future was at stake in the M68 high court case, which upheld the government’s legal right to finance and run offshore detention centres in foreign countries and ruled that it did have the power to remove 267 asylum seekers from Australia. Waleed’s case was also highlighted by the #Letthemstay protest movement.

In the wake of the M68 case the government gave an undertaking to give 72 hours’ notice if any of those asylum seekers or refugees were going to be removed from Australia.

Guardian Australia understands neither Waleed, nor his legal team, has been given this notice yet.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection told Guardian Australia: “Reports that an asylum seeker has been returned to Manus Island this morning after receiving medical treatment in Australia are incorrect.



“The department routinely transfers detainees throughout the detention centre network for a range of reasons.”



Police say the group of protesters, between 10 and 15, were moved on by officers, but no arrests made. Operations at Melbourne airport were unaffected.

Waleed arrived in Australia by boat seeking asylum. Many of his large extended family have also been forcibly displaced from Sudan by the protracted and bloody civil war in that country. He has siblings in France and Libya, and cousins in Israel and Germany.

Daniel Webb from the Human Rights Law Centre told the Guardian it was assumed Waleed was being taken to Christmas Island. And he said that in the wake of Waleed’s removal from Melbourne, there would be widespread concern amongst other asylum seekers in Australia.

“This is one of the first acts of the new Turnbull government. Secretive deportations in the middle of the night is not letting them stay, whisking them off to a tiny island in the middle of the ocean where they are locked up indefinitely is not letting them stay.

“Right now, there will be families around Australia, in our communities, terrified that they will be next.”