Refugee incorrectly jailed for 58 days in ACT has no right to compensation, court rules

The man, now in his 30s, had fled the war-torn nation of his birth before his brothers were made child soldiers. He lived in a Kenyan refugee camp for 10 years before coming to Australia in 2005, the ACT supreme court heard.

In 2019, police arrested him at the home of his former girlfriend in Canberra, wrongly believing he had breached the conditions of an interim family violence order.

His arrest and imprisonment should never have happened, his lawyers told the court.

Police arrested him in October 2019 for an alleged contravention of conditions that prohibited him from seeing his former girlfriend. The conditions of the order had expired months earlier, in August 2019, when the court sentenced him for a related charge of property damage.

The courts jailed the man for contravening an order that was no longer in effect.

He sued in the supreme court, making a claim against both the ACT magistrates court and the ACT government. He alleged the magistrates court had no jurisdiction to act as it had and he sought damages for wrongful imprisonment.

The supreme court judge also rejected the argument that his imprisonment was arbitrary and a contravention of the Human Rights Act.