18 Nov 2002

More than a hundred asylum seekers returned to Kabul from detention in the Pacific

11:30 am on 18 November 2002

A group of 113 Afghan asylum seekers have arrived back in Kabul after more than a year in Australian-run detention camps in the Pacific.

Australia's Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said that 110 men, one woman and two children were on the flight under an Australian repatriation scheme that paid asylum seekers just over a thousand US dollars to go home.

Australia came up with the scheme in May in a bid to clear the would-be refugees from detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

The immigration minister said the number of asylum seekers housed on Nauru and at Papua's New Guinea's Manus Island had dropped to 820, down from the original 1,515.

The two Pacific nations agreed last year to accept asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Turkey in return for aid after Australia began intercepting boatloads of illegal migrants and refusing them entry to Australia.