A refugee who was detained by Australia for nine years – including time in the same hotel as Novak Djokovic – has finally been freed.
Mehdi Ali was just 15 when he fled persecution in Iran and arrived on a boat from Indonesia to Christmas Island.
His case became more widely known in January because the then world No.1 tennis player Novak Djokovic was detained in the same Melbourne hotel as Mr Ali, now aged 24.
There were many Serbian nationals protesting outside the $109-a-night Park Hotel in Carlton while Djokovic was there, but there were also many showing their support for Mr Ali and other refugees.
Refugee Mehdi Ali (pictured) was just 15 when he fled persecution in Iran and arrived on a boat from Indonesia to Christmas Island
On Thursday night he posted to his almost 25,000 Twitter followers that ‘Tonight I am free and leaving Australia to start my life in the United States of America.
‘But I won’t be happy until all my friends are get released from detention. It’s not freedom until we are all free. Thank you all for your support.’
Over the past nine years, Mr Ali has been moved from Christmas Island to offshore detention in Nauru and then to various onshore detention facilities.
A few years after he arrived, Mr Ali was found to be a genuine refugee. He is an Ahwazi Arab, who are persecuted in Iran. His childhood home was destroyed in a fire.
Sending him back to the country he escaped from aged 15 could have been a death sentence.
But recognition as a refugee did not mean Mr Ali would be released – the fact that he arrived by boat meant he would not be allowed to settle in Australia.
It was a policy brought in by Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in 2013 as it was taunted by Tony Abbott and his Coalition colleagues for being ‘soft’ on borders.
The policy has stayed throughout the three Coalition governments that followed.
Iranian refugee Mehdi Ali used Twitter (pictured) to announce that after nine years of being held in detention by Australia he has finally been freed
Mr Ali’s final detention home was in Melbourne, with a media throng suddenly appearing outside because one of his new neighbours was a tennis star who refused to get a Covid-19 vaccination.
He and his supporters saw this as a good way to get some attention for his case and the cases of all the other people found to be genuine refugees, but with no possibility of being allowed to stay in Australia.
In January, Mr Ali told the Guardian what it was like for him being kept in limbo in a Melbourne hotel where in December, refugees posted pictures of maggots found in the food they were served in their rooms.
‘I just tried to figure out how to fill my days: I have to survive them. If I can sleep, I sleep as much as I can, otherwise I just go for a smoke, watch movies, read books.
Tennis player Novak Djokovic (pictured) helped shed some light on the plight of refugees in Australia when he was held in the same hotel as some of them in Melbourne in January
Novak Djokovic was held in the $109-a-night Park Hotel in the Carlton suburb of Melbourne, where refugees are also detained
‘But usually, I don’t do anything, I just lay down on the bed. I just lie here.’
While he was grateful for the light shone on his case by the presence of Djokovic in the same hotel, he said it also brought ‘disappointment’.
‘Everyone wants to ask me about Novak, what the hotel is like for him. But they don’t ask about us: we have been locked up in this place for months, for years.’
For Mr Ali, his detention is now over and he will go to the US, which is giving him the freedom Australia did not.
In December, refugees being held in the same hotel as Mehdi Ali – and later Novak Djokovic – posted pictures of maggots found in the food they were served in their rooms
With thousands of comments welcoming his freedom, he posted another message on Twitter late on Thursday night.
‘Thank you all for your kind comments and messages,’ he said. ‘I apologise if I can’t reply to them.
‘Unfortunately, I cannot be happy yet. How could I be happy when my friends are sleeping with tears and sighs and wake up with tears and sighs?’
