THE Australian government said today that it released 80 people, including convicted criminals, from migration detention centres since the High Court ruled last week that their indefinite detention was unconstitutional.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the government had taken the step after the court overturned a 2004 precedent set in the case of a Palestinian man, Ahmed Al-Kateb, that stateless people could be held indefinitely in detention.

The court ruled last Wednesday that a member of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority must be freed from indefinite detention.