Ann Arnold: Late last year, immigration detainees at Christmas Island rioted, and the place went into lockdown.

Journalist: The tipping point seems to have been the death of a refugee who escaped from the centre. Fazel Chegeni's body was found by the Australian Federal Police yesterday.

Peter Dutton: The advice that I've received is that there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

Richard Di Natale: We are pushing people to breaking point…

Ann Arnold: The death of Iranian man Fazel Chegeni Nejad in fact raises many questions about the circumstances that led to his death. He had been severely tortured in his home country, and four years ago he was granted refugee status by the Australian authorities. But Fazel and four of his Iranian friends would effectively be held in indefinite detention.

Pamela Curr: I mean, they were refugees! How long do you lock someone up for a two-minute fight?

Ann Arnold: Fazel's fate was sealed, as it turned out, in a brief fight between detainees in a Curtin Detention Centre canteen. It happened only months after he arrived in Australia in 2011. No-one was seriously injured in the brawl, but Fazel and four others were convicted of criminal assault. And under Australian law, that gave the minister the right to refuse to release them from detention.

Gillian Triggs: They're spending years in detention for what is a very minor offence. And had it occurred outside, they probably wouldn't have received a sentence at all. So this is a draconian response.

Ann Arnold: That's Professor Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Apart from one period in community detention, Fazel Chegeni was locked up until the day he died, four years after arriving. His immigration file contains many red flags about his well-being. Fazel's detention destroyed an already damaged man.

This is Background Briefing, and I'm Ann Arnold.

Fazel Chegeni did a detention tour of Australia. His Australian life began and ended at Christmas Island. In between, he was detained at Curtin, Melbourne, Yongah Hill outside Perth, Brisbane, and Darwin.

Two weeks before he died on Christmas Island, Fazel put in a desperate call to his friend Mansour, in Melbourne.

Mansour: He called me to…you know, he talked to me and say, 'I'm not okay, I am very upset, I don't know what can I do.'

Ann Arnold: Then, Mansour got bad news.

Mansour: One friend called me and said, you know, 'Fazel dead.' When I go to Facebook I see, yeah, Fazel is dead, you know. Oh, I don't know, what can I say. I can't believe really. I don't know how he get dead, serious. It's very big question for me too. I want to know how he get dead.

Ann Arnold: There are clues in Fazel's extensive government file, which contains more than a thousand documents. Over and over again, medical personnel noted his declining mental health, suicide attempts, and warned that continued detention was harming him. Immigration staff urged their superiors to prioritise his case.

When Fazel's coronial inquest is held, lawyer George Newhouse, now representing Fazel's family, will seek to have the Western Australian coroner examine the care Fazel received while in detention.

George Newhouse: The Commonwealth government knows that individuals in its care are at serious risk of mental harm in detention. And they have a duty of care to those people. So this case is an exemplar of the worst failures of the immigration health system.

Immigration Department officer: Okay, so the following is a recorded interview with Boat ID NIC 01. The interview is being held on 19 Jan 2012. It's being held in the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre.

Ann Arnold: This interview with Fazel was held for his refugee claim, four months after he arrived by boat. The interviewer was an Immigration Department officer. Also there was an interpreter in the Faili Kurdish language, and a migration agent.

Immigration Department officer: Present is myself, an officer of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. And yourself, Fazel Chegeni Nejad, who is claiming to be a refugee as defined by the refugees convention.

Okay, so can you tell me why you left Iran and why you fear returning?

Fazel Chegeni Nejad: I didn't have any identity and I was tortured, mentally...

Ann Arnold: Fazel said he was a Faili Kurdish man, not recognised as an Iranian citizen by the Iranian government. He was stateless, which had meant a hard life

Immigration Department officer: You first mentioned that it's because you have no identity. What is it like to have no identity and be living in Iran?

Fazel Chegeni Nejad: We don't have the right to work, we don't have health insurance. And recently the Iranians are entitled to get subsidy from the government but we can't.

Ann Arnold: Fazel said he did not have the right to go to school, to work, or to have health insurance. But more than that, he was frequently harassed and targeted by police, partly, he said, because of his appearance; he was scarred and had tattoos. He was seen as an outcast. He was sent to the notorious Kahrizak prison for 40 days. It was like a military camp in the desert, and baking hot. There he was tortured, in many ways.

Fazel Chegeni Nejad: And when I was in the prison the smallest torture was this, when we were taking us to eat they were telling us you should bark like a dog. And when you leave the eating room, you should make sounds like a donkey.

Ann Arnold: Much worse than that was being made to lick a toilet bowl clean.

He was raped.

Fazel Chegeni Nejad: They were spitting on the tip of the baton and they were putting the baton in our anus.

Ann Arnold: Fazel Chegeni said he was released into the desert, thin and traumatised, and was expected to die there.

The Australian government would accept most of Fazel's account, acknowledging the known events in Iran, and granting him refugee status. But for the next four years, the Australian government would refuse to give him a visa.

Fazel's journey to Australia was like so many thousands of other people's in 2011, by boat. He joined asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, congregating in and around Jakarta, Indonesia.

Fazel had more bad luck than most. Several attempts to join a boat to Australia failed. One time a people smuggler stole his money. Finally, after eight months there, he was contacted by a people smuggler and transported with about 50 others to the ocean. They were rushed into a number of very small boats, which then met up with the bigger boat they would go to Australia in. But it was not what the people smuggler had described.

Bahman: They're telling lie all the time. They said the good boat will be there and they have room to sleep, something like that, just promise, you know, the fake promise. And then when we saw the reality and it wasn't really that boat they promised.

Ann Arnold: This is Bahman, a friend of Fazel's who now lives in Hobart.

Bahman: It was safe for six people. But we were about 50 or 52 people I think.

Ann Arnold: Bahman thought it was too dangerous. He and many others wanted to be taken back to Indonesia.

Bahman: And just I ask, in body language, just tell him bring me back, I will give you my $6,000, I don't want to go to Australia. And just I scared. I'm going to die. I'm sure my life finish now when I saw the fishing boat.

One of my friends talk Indonesian with the small boat captain, and he said, 'No way. If you want to go back, we will kill you here. We put you on the water. And when we put you on the water, you will die.'

Ann Arnold: The boat journey was gruelling. But they made it. The asylum-seekers were picked up by the Australian Navy and taken to the Christmas Island processing centre. After six weeks there, Fazel and his boatmates were transferred to the controversial Curtin Detention Centre in north-west Western Australia. It was remote, hot, and crowded.

Caroline Fleay: It was a series of dongas, you know, the mining site kind of set-up.

Ann Arnold: Academic Caroline Fleay had been visiting there throughout that year, 2011, researching a report.

Caroline Fleay: There was air conditioning at least, but for much of the year in that part of Australia it's incredibly hot, and in the summer months very humid as well. So a lot of the people during the day just wouldn't leave their rooms, primarily. And of course there's not much to do either. So people would be sitting around fairly idle, and it doesn't take long for despair to kick in at that point. Because they had also no idea how long they were going to be there and what would happen to them.

Ann Arnold: This was the atmosphere that Fazel and his boatmates would find themselves in. Caroline Fleay's co-authored report, The Hidden Men, described a tense and disturbed population of up to 1,400 men.

Caroline Fleay: In one of the weeks that we were there, there were two suicide attempts just that week. And it's usually harm that people will do to themselves. But of course sometimes that spills over to where there is friction between people.

Ann Arnold: And that's exactly what happened on 22 December, when Fazel Chegeni sat down to eat in the canteen. A fight broke out, and it would lead to him being detained in the system for four years. It was captured on CCTV.

Pamela Curr: If you look here you see…

Ann Arnold: So we've got a split screen, and we can see the men sitting quietly at tables on the right screen, and on the left we're looking from behind the serving counter where people are queueing up to get their food.

This footage, which Melbourne-based refugee advocate Pamela Curr is showing me, is taken from two cameras in the canteen. There was a fight involving more than a dozen people, between Afghans, who were the largest group at Curtin, and Iranians, who formed a minority group.

In the footage, Fazel is sitting and eating with his back to the camera, and he doesn't see an Afghan man who enters and approaches Fazel's group.

Pamela Curr: You can't see on this but the man is shouting at him, and Fazel puts an open hand up to push him back. The man hits him over the head with a plate, which you can't see so well here but you can see in the other footage. Fazel falls on the ground. Then the men all jump up…

Ann Arnold: Fazel's friends jump up and heads towards…

Pamela Curr: And then there is a fracas where there is pushing and shoving. Nothing serious. The guys who are serving food are just standing and looking. The officers come in.

Ann Arnold: They look worried.

Pamela Curr: Yeah, yeah, there's a fracas.

Ann Arnold: Plastic chairs were picked up and swung, punches flew and at one point someone was on the ground and kicked. Fazel can be seen taking part. The brawl lasted for about a minute. No-one was seriously hurt.

Pamela Curr: So then we've got Fazel back here, straightening things up, putting the tables back together. Sits down, fixes the table, picking up the broken plate, picking up the chair, everything goes back to normal.

Ann Arnold: This was the incident for which Fazel, and four fellow Iranians, would later be charged with assault. No Afghans were charged.

It was very bad timing for a violent incident, no matter how minor. In 2011, there was growing political intolerance towards asylum seekers. In April, while Fazel was still in Indonesia, a riot in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre caused $9 million worth of damage. Tony Abbott, as opposition leader, called for any asylum seekers who commit offences in detention to be denied residency.

The Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, then introduced a change to the Migration Act; anyone who was convicted of an offence committed in detention would now not be granted a visa.

Gemma Leigh-Dodds: So we've seen instances where a detainee may have been accused of, say, kicking somebody or punching someone on the arm, damaging Commonwealth property.

Ann Arnold: Gemma Leigh-Dodds is a lawyer for Slater and Gordon, which has acted for detainees in this situation, in cases against the Commonwealth.

Gemma Leigh-Dodds: These are the kinds of low-level criminal activities which if they result in a conviction means that the detainee will fail the character test.

Ann Arnold: Failing the character test means no visa or residency, unless the Minister for Immigration chooses to intervene.

For Fazel Chegeni, this policy would seem doubly unjust, and confusing. Background Briefing has learned that after the canteen fight, later the same evening, there was another incident, in which Fazel was attacked by a large group of Afghan detainees. He sustained a broken nose and other injuries. No one would be charged over this incident.

Former Iranian detainees say that Fazel and one or two friends were being escorted by Serco staff to a medical check when the attack happened. His friends managed to get away. Some of the attackers had sticks, broken off a nearby tree. This is Mansour, who says he witnessed it.

Mansour: I see many, many Afghan people come to the area to fighting. Everyone had some wood, many people had something dangerous for fighting. And this time get big fighting.

Mehdi: Make a circle to him, and then they come everywhere and punch him, attack him, he fall down and again they kick him, everybody come kick. He's like a ball, soccer.

Ann Arnold: These men, and a third witness, said Fazel had bruises and lumps, as well as a broken nose.

Mehdi: Yes his body like eggplant colour, you know what I say, his leg, his hand, his body, his back, and also his head.

Ann Arnold: Mehdi says there were several Serco security guards there but they didn't intervene.

The broken nose, and the attack, would distress Fazel for the rest of his days. On 24 December, 2011, two days after the attack, he was upset and frightened. There was this handwritten note from him, a client request form to see his case manager. The note was presumably written by a friend because Fazel was illiterate.

Reading: Hello. Could I have an appointment with my case manager, because I have a problem. I am in danger, here not safe for me. Afghanistan people had fought with me and they broken my nose and hurt my face and my back and my leg. Please put an appointment with me soon, because medical doesn't work for me. I need to your help. Thank you.

Ann Arnold: Attached to that note is a single line response from his case manager: 'Met with client. Client didn't raise this.'

The witnesses Background Briefing spoke to say there were CCTV cameras in the area where Fazel was attacked.

While he would pay a high price for the earlier canteen brawl, there would be no repercussions for the men who later beat him up. For Fazel, this episode would deepen the sense of injustice he already had about his life.

Border Force has confirmed to Background Briefing that the attack on Fazel did occur. The spokesperson said, 'There is no indication of the existence of CCTV footage.' This attack and the way it was handled by the authorities, and the extent that it contributed to Fazel's decline is now likely to be raised in Fazel's inquest. Lawyer George Newhouse, representing his family:

George Newhouse: The sense of injustice that he might have felt by not having his circumstances adequately acknowledged by those in charge of him would have been palpable, and may well have contributed to the circumstances that ultimately led to his death. These are things that we'll hopefully get to the bottom of.

Ann Arnold: Three months after that fateful December day of violence, there was some good news. Fazel was notified in March 2012 that he'd been granted a Protection Obligation Determination, or POD. In other words, the Australian government agreed he met the refugee definitions, and that we were obliged to offer him protection.

Fazel's Kurdish friend Mansour got his refugee notification two days before, and remembers how stressed Fazel was.

Mansour: He come to me and he cried, serious, I see him cry. He said, 'I get refugee too, I'm happy, oh thank you God.' And then he get a little bit relaxed, you know?

Ann Arnold: But the relief didn't last, as Mansour and Bahman and most of the others from their boat were released into the community in Melbourne, and Fazel wasn't.

The canteen group was held back in the Curtin Detention Centre while the Australian Federal Police investigated that fight. Mansour, who had shared the hard times in Indonesia and the boat journey, kept in touch from Melbourne.

Mansour: I send a message to him. I say 'Call me bro, I miss you, what are you doing,' or something like that. When he call me he just say, 'I'm very so upset. I don't know, what can I do?' I'm feeling Fazel get depression really, he get very, very depression.

Ann Arnold: And that was reflected in medical notes, which documented a range of health and behavioural problems. In May, six months after the two incidents, a case manager reported: 'Client continued to rant about how he does not know where his case is at and that the people that broke his nose in the incident should be punished and have been released.'

Later that month, a psychiatrist said Fazel had 'pretty much exhausted his capacity to cope in the detention environment'. He requested priority processing for Fazel, partly on the grounds of his history of trauma and torture.

Curtin University's Caroline Fleay, who had made numerous visits north to the Curtin Detention Centre that year, concluded in her report that amongst the general staff there was insufficient expertise in dealing with distressed and despairing people.

Caroline Fleay: I saw a number of people who were clearly mentally unwell and should have been in facilities that were designed to help them. There were people walking around talking to themselves who had been there for far too long.

Ann Arnold: Researcher Caroline Fleay, who's also a board member of the Refugee Council of Australia.

In July 2012, Fazel Chegeni was transferred to the Melbourne detention centre, MITA.

In August, a psychiatrist reported that his mental state was further deteriorating because of the continued stay in a restrictive setting. The doctor requested the Immigration Department to urgently review Fazel's case. Then, 13 months after the canteen brawl at Curtin Detention Centre, he was finally charged with criminal assault.

Two months later, he jumped off a roof at the Melbourne detention centre. This is his friend Mehdi:

Mehdi: In 2013 Fazal get a little bit mentally…

Ann Arnold: Mentally unwell?

Mehdi: Mentally…yes. Yes, he tried to kill himself and jump down from visit room at MITA. And he jumped down…

Ann Arnold: Off the roof, wasn't it?

Mehdi: Off the roof, five metres, six metres, and he didn't get any hurt, you know what I'm saying…

Ann Arnold: I heard that a security guard, one of the staff members got underneath and kind of broke his fall, so that protected him a bit.

Mehdi: Yeah, yeah.

Ann Arnold: After that, with his court case pending, Fazel was granted community detention in April. He spent eight months in Melbourne's northern suburbs, seemingly without incident. His friend Mehdi saw a different man.

Mehdi: Yeah, I saw him. He's riding the bike, and go to shops, like normal things, everything is normal, you know what I'm saying.

Ann Arnold: Pamela Curr would visit Fazel and his housemate.

Pamela Curr: I remember visiting him and, you know, they used to go and play basketball, and walk the dog. The dog was a demon dog, a huge puppy, but they loved it. You know, he started to open up. And then we put him back into detention and destroyed him.

Ann Arnold: Fazel was sent back to detention because in the Perth magistrate's court on 12 September, 2014[1], he and the four other Iranian men were convicted of criminal assault for the canteen fight at Curtin Detention Centre two years earlier. They would each be given a six-month prison sentence.

They went to jail in Perth initially, then the Supreme Court overturned the sentence, describing it as 'manifestly excessive'. The men were given a suspended sentence instead. But the Supreme Court upheld the criminal conviction. Fazel was freed from jail, but he was sent back to immigration detention.

Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs says he shouldn't have been.

Gillian Triggs: We have a criminal justice system that accepts that when you've served out that penalty, then you are entitled to a fresh start. This is what our criminal justice system is based on. And yet what we're finding through the Department of Immigration is that people are being held for many years beyond what would have been the end, in his case, of a suspended sentence. So we've really reached a position where it's completely out of proportion to the offence.

Ann Arnold: For Fazel there would be no fresh start. With a conviction, it appeared he would never be released from detention. Not only that, but soon after the court cases, in January 2014 he found his history being challenged. He was visited by two immigration officers at Yongah Hill Detention Centre, outside Perth. They were inquiring into his claim of being stateless in Iran. For most of the interview, which stretched to nearly three hours, Fazel politely answered their questions about his life in his home country. Occasionally he got frustrated. He couldn't see the point of the questions.

Fazel Chegeni Nejad: I didn't expect that in Australia, the Australian government would treat me like this, that's my fate, that's my destiny, to be in a detention centre for a long time.

Immigration officer: Fazel, we understand where you're coming from, okay, but we do need to get through this interview though, all right.

Fazel, you've told us previously that you were imprisoned. Can you tell me about when the police approached you or being imprisoned, exactly what happened, what occurred.

Ann Arnold: It's clear in this interview that Fazel had become disillusioned and fed up. The attack in Curtin still consumed him. He tried to tell the immigration interviewers how he was kicked and punched while Serco officers stood by.

Fazel Chegeni Nejad: Five officers observed, witnessing what happens to me. And even I've got a broken nose…

Immigration officer: Fazel please, what we'd like to do…

Fazel Chegeni Nejad: …they told me camera is not working, we have no…

Immigration officer: At the end of this interview, if that's something you want to pursue we will discuss that, okay, but we do have to get through this interview, okay?

Ann Arnold: Afterwards Fazel was despondent. He was moved back to the Melbourne detention centre.

Friends like refugee advocate Caterina Mezzatesta noticed how down he was. She took Fazel and other detainees out once a week, to play soccer and cook dinner. But Fazel stopped going.

Caterina Mezzatesta: After a little while he refused to go on outings because he couldn't bear to come back and live in detention again…

Ann Arnold: Being out and coming back made it worse.

Caterina Mezzatesta: Yes. So then he just didn't go out at all.

Ann Arnold: Such was the concern about Fazel within the Immigration Department that in July 2014, a senior officer wrote to the then minister, Scott Morrison, asking him to consider the release of Fazel Chegeni Nejad and nine other detainees in a similar situation. The report noted that the men had been held for between two and five years. The cost of detention on the mainland was up to $320,000 a year for each person. Community detention, on the other hand, was half that.

Two months later, Scott Morrison gave his response. He circled the 'not approved' option on the document, and another box that said he'd noted its contents. And that was that. Fazel and the nine others named in the request would stay locked up.

The Human Rights Commission's Gillian Triggs says the immigration minister has too much power over individual asylum-seekers.

Gillian Triggs: As a lawyer I would say this is an over-reach of executive power. The government has given itself power through parliament to in a sense exercise a discretion or fail to exercise that discretion, in a way which is not reviewable by the courts.

Ann Arnold: In the Melbourne detention centre, MITA, staff who'd got to know Fazel Chegeni were getting increasingly worried. One case manager wrote 'I'd really like to help Fazel. He faces further extended periods in detention. He had controlled himself remarkably well under the circumstances and has been a pleasure to have at the MITA since his return.'

Fazel was sometimes agitated and, by one account, paranoid. He said he was being bullied, and asked to be transferred. And he was, to Brisbane. At the Brisbane detention centre he was welcomed by Iranian detainee Ali, who had been asked by friends in Melbourne to look after Fazel.

Ali: In the front of each block there are two wooden chairs. We sit there, and we smoke, talk to each other, what's happening.

Ann Arnold: They shared their life stories, and tried to keep each other going.

Ali: Sometimes I was down, sometimes he was down, we try to a little bit lift up each other and say, 'Man, don't forget, it's like that, tomorrow you should be good, and hopefully one day we get good news.'

Ann Arnold: But Fazel's behaviour was erratic.

Ali: He tried to run some nights around the yard of the detention, and in our language he said, 'God, please help me. Enough. I can't tolerate any more.'

Ann Arnold: Then early one morning when they were asleep, guards came into the room the two men shared. They woke Ali and told him they were taking him to a medical appointment. But he was suspicious.

Ali: I wake up Fazel. 'Fazel, please, just pack up my stuff. I don't have time. I have to get ready and I think they want to transfer me.' He sits on the bed, and his head look down, and he shakes his head, and he said, 'Okay.' I said, 'Okay man, don't worry. One day we'll see each other again.'

Ann Arnold: As Ali suspected, there was no medical appointment. He was transferred immediately to the Darwin detention centre. Afterwards he heard that in the Brisbane centre, Fazel would spend his days sitting on the same wooden chair, with Ali's empty chair beside him. Fortunately for Ali, he was released from Darwin and returned to Brisbane to live. He moved in with the family of Geoff McKeich, and visited Fazel in detention when he could. Geoff McKeich, a Baptist church-goer, took up Fazel's case.

Geoff McKeich: It just seemed to be grossly unfair when we look at the news every night and we see people who are recorded on CCTV setting out to obviously punch the daylights out of somebody, and obviously the intent is to hurt them grossly. Then when they go to court they get let off with a nine-month good behaviour bond. It just was all wrong to me, so something had to be done, so that's why I got involved.

Ann Arnold: Geoff McKeitch would begin the long process of applying for a temporary protection visa for Fazel.

But Fazel was not going well. He was admitted to a Brisbane psychiatric hospital. He would learn that a man who had been on the same asylum-seeker boat as him had committed suicide in Brisbane. He was not allowed to go to the funeral. Then, sometime in 2015, Fazel was moved for the eighth time, this time to the Darwin detention centre, away from his Brisbane visitors and supporters.

This is Ali:

Ali: They transfer him to Darwin, which made his situation worse.

Ann Arnold: In Darwin, it was hard for Fazel to stay in touch with his friends, with limited phone and internet access.

This is his friend Mehdi, in Melbourne:

Medhi: In the Darwin detention centre I heard someone say he's try again jump down from roof, and I'm sure he's get mentally again.

Ann Arnold: Then Fazel was moved again. In a dramatic night-time operation, Fazel was rounded up with a group of 11 other detainees, on 19 September last year.

Journalist: Asylum seekers from Darwin's Wickham Point detention centre have told the ABC 12 detainees were transferred to Christmas Island by armed Border Force officers early on Saturday morning. It is understood that…

Ann Arnold: Fazel was sent back to where he'd first landed, four years before, but by now Christmas Island was a very different place.

Journalist: But the government has turned Christmas Island into a high security prison for the hardest cases in the detention network…

Ann Arnold: On the ABC's AM last November, Michael Brissendon put to Peter Dutton, the new Immigration Minister, that asylum seekers were now being mixed with dangerous criminals on Christmas Island. Peter Dutton said it was only high risk asylum seekers who were now in detention.

Peter Dutton: We have a look at each of the individual detainees within the detention network. Now, their risk is assessed on their behaviour. That individual risk profile is worked up for each detainee. That is the basis on which the Border Force officers make a decision about whether somebody is at a high security facility or whether they're at a low security arrangement. Now…

Michael Brissenden: So the asylum seekers who are there are high security asylum seekers, are they?

Peter Dutton: And some are extreme.

Ann Arnold: Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. Fazel Chegeni, it seems, was by now seen as a high risk detainee.

Sydney-based refugee advocate Jane Healey is one of the few independent outsiders who have been inside the new-style Christmas Island Detention Centre. She went there last September to see detainees who'd been moved from Sydney. Fazel was there, but she didn't meet him.

Jane Healey: I knew from the guys that I'd had spoken to that they kept reiterating to us that this was nothing like any other detention centre they'd been in, that there was a high level of staff-directed violence against them, that they were isolated from Immigration, from advocacy, they had very little information about where their cases were up to.

Ann Arnold: Jane Healey describes an intimidating and abusive staff culture. She heard staff referring to 'criminals who came on boats'.

Jane Healey: I actually found as soon as I got off the plane at Christmas Island the Border Force presence is very obvious. It feels Black Ops. It feels menacing. I found it just incongruent with what I knew about these people, that they were from countries where they had fled persecution, they had fled war, and that they were coming to Australia to seek refuge, and yet they were being treated like they were some kind of high espionage criminals on an isolated island. And it is very isolated.

Ann Arnold: We put Jane Healey's allegations to the Australian Border Force. The department said it takes seriously any allegation of misconduct by staff. There had been no charges laid against any staff at Christmas Island in the past six months, Border Force said.

Fazel's friend Mehdi doesn't understand why Fazel was sent to Christmas Island.

Mehdi: Because he was sick. Everywhere if somebody is sick they should support him, care about him and send him to the hospital, not in high security.

Ann Arnold: It was at this point Geoff McKeich in Brisbane decided to write to the department, asking why Fazel was still being held at all.

Geoff McKeich: In my letter that I wrote, which is entitled 'Urgent Attention' explaining Fazel's situation, the last paragraph is that, 'In response, please do not quote me the standard department rhetoric. Should Fazel not be released into community detention, the department must take responsibility for any further deterioration in Fazel's health and mental state. Fazel's situation is serious and needs to be addressed urgently.'

Ann Arnold: And then the response that you got?

Geoff McKeich: This email was sent to his case manager, who then sent back a note to say that, 'Yes, we are looking after him and I'm…' (my summary) '…doing my best to push his case.' So we went all the way back to square one because many of his case managers have already pushed his case over the previous 1,100 days.

Ann Arnold: Ali, living at Geoff McKeitch's house, kept in contact with Fazel on Facebook.

Ali: I just left some message for him, I said, 'Man, we are thinking about you. Hopefully one day you're coming out. You go out, we hang around. Geoff is trying to follow your case.' But when you say something and repeat and repeat, it's like a joke, nothing changed. Every day I'm in detention.

Ann Arnold: He's heard that before.

Ali: Yes. Many times and from many people.

Ann Arnold: Fazel Chegeni Nejad died on the weekend of the 7th October last year. There were conflicting reports about what happened, but he appears to have escaped that high security institution, and the Australian Federal Police say he was found dead on the island.

After Fazel's death, there was a riot at the Christmas Island centre, with reports that tension had been building for weeks. A man who was detained at Christmas Island at the time, who we'll call Mario, has told Background Briefing he saw Fazel the day before he died.

Mario: I asked him how he was as he was standing against a steel pole, with one hand holding his head and the other on his heart. His answer was very poignant to me, and has stuck in my mind ever since. His response was, 'My head and my heart hurt.'

Ann Arnold: Mario said Fazel was often a point of conversation among detainees.

Mario: He was very weak and frail, he didn't eat very much, I never saw him eat a meal. He was constantly drinking coffees and smoking cigarettes. He was clearly not a well man, it was plainly obvious to anyone that he wasn't very well. He wasn't eating for starters, so the alarm bells should have been ringing.

Ann Arnold: Border Force said in its statement to Background Briefing that the department and its health provider were aware of Fazel Chegeni's mental health history, and he was being managed accordingly.

But George Newhouse, the lawyer for Fazel's family, says the case highlights the lack of oversight of health care in our detention system.

George Newhouse: At the moment there is none, apart from, sadly, coroners. So I don't think we should be relying on the death of an individual to look into the systemic failures of the immigration detention system. There really should be a body, an independent body that's charged with the oversight of these matters so that people don't die in the future.

Ann Arnold: Three of the men who were convicted over the Curtin canteen fight remain in detention in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. A fourth had his charges dropped and was released into the community. Background Briefing has spoken to people who know each of the four men, and all are said to be struggling with their mental health.

Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs says the indefinite detention of Fazel, and others like him, is all about politics.

Gillian Triggs: What we have here is people being warehoused, for years and years on end, as some sort of gesture to a political objective, which is very ill-informed and politically ideological. And it's a tragedy that these people's lives are being destroyed, effectively, with long-term mental health impacts, even when they are finally released into the community where we will be carrying the burden of this cruel treatment for many, many years into the future.

Ann Arnold: Research by Hagar Cohen and Jess Hill, coordinating producer is Linda McGinness, the technical producer Andrei Shabunov, and the executive producer is Wendy Carlisle. I'm Ann Arnold.





[1] Correction: The hearing commenced on 9 September, 2013. The conviction and sentencing was 12 December, 2013