SYDNEY, July 22: Australia stepped up its battle against illegal immigration on Monday, announcing moves to cancel hundreds of temporary refugee visas amid mounting evidence of bogus claims by asylum seekers.

Almost 50 asylum seekers granted temporary protection visas after claiming to have been persecuted in Afghanistan have been issued with cancellation notices, and another 280 are facing investigation.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock also announced that seven Afghan asylum seekers had taken advantage of a special repatriation incentive of 2,000 dollars (1,120 US) to return voluntarily after spending up to three years in detention in Australia.

Almost 60 people, all now out of appeal options, had been offered the package, with 39 accepting, including the 17 who either left last Saturday or who have had travel documents issued.

Among the 50 issued with cancellation notices is Ali Baktiari, father of two boys now back in the remote Woomera detention centre after sparking a diplomatic storm last week by unsuccessfully seeking asylum from the British consulate in Melbourne.

Like most of the other 330 asylum seekers now facing the probability of deportation, he is believed by the government to have been in Pakistan at the time he claims to have been suffering persecution in Afghanistan.

Baktiari and his two sons, Alamdar, 14, and Montazar, 12, claim to be members of Afghanistan’s persecuted Hazara minority and have the distinctive north-Asiatic features of the Hazaras.

But a spokesman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said on Monday: “There’s very large Hazara populations in Pakistan and have been for many years.”

“Some might even have been born in Afghanistan but the evidence is that they were no longer resident in Afghanistan at a time they claim they were being persecuted there,” he said.

“So some of the evidence goes to issues of nationality and some to issues of credibility, in that they were nowhere near where they claim to have been facing persecution in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

“In a case a couple of years ago that went all the way to a UN committee, we came across evidence a fellow claiming to have been in a North African country being beaten and tortured in jail was actually travelling in Italy and France at the relevant time.”

Canberra has moved to cancel the visas of almost 50 people given temporary residence, including Baktiari. Of about 280 others, 160 are under investigation and the other cases are awaiting assignment to an investigator.

All are being informed of the basis on which cancellation is ordered so they can argue if evidence is wrong or has been misinterpreted.

Baktiari, like some of the others, is being helped by a team of Australian lawyers sympathetic to the plight of asylum seekers to take their cases to the Federal Court.

The evidence against the 50 has been compiled through a screening process introduced after their visas were granted.

A linguistic examination has shown, for instance, that some of the Pakhtoon speakers have Pakistani rather than Afghan accents.

“If someone tells you they have lived their whole life in Afghanistan, yet they have difficulty describing where they lived and their knowledge of local practices and identities is very limited ... then it all starts to add up and raises doubts about their credibility,” Ruddock’s spokesman said.—AFP