Iranian refugee freed after two years in New Zealand jail

Apr 5, 2007, 10:03 GMT

Wellington - An asylum seeker from Iran, Thomas Yadegary, who was jailed 29 months ago after refusing to sign an application for a passport needed so that he could be deported to his homeland, was released on Thursday.

The Auckland High Court released him on strict bail conditions including a nighttime curfew following a judicial review of his case in December.

Yadegary, who arrived in New Zealand in 1993, resisted moves to deport him after his visitor's visa ran out, claiming that he would be persecuted in Iran because he had converted from Islam to be a Roman Catholic.

A chef who cooked for former US President Bill Clinton when he visited New Zealand, Yadegary worked in Auckland hotels until he was arrested in November 2004 after his final appeal to stay was turned down.

Amnesty International took up his case and agreed it was unsafe for him to return to Iran.

Details of the court hearing that freed him were suppressed pending a government appeal.

Green Party Member of Parliament Keith Locke said, 'The decision today brings into focus the appalling government policies which kept an innocent man behind bars here for so long.

'New Zealand is not a CIA rendering facility, a gulag in Stalinist Russia or Guantanamo Bay,' he said. 'This is New Zealand where we are supposed to give people a fair go.'