Rejected Hamas sympathiser applied for wrong visa, immigration minister says
Palestinian woman Mona Zahed applied to come to Australia on a visa typically used for speaking tours rather than humanitarian options.
Senior immigration officials noticed the error after they were alerted to social media posts Ms Zahed made celebrating Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel in 2023.
Due to the wrong visa type, Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke said on Sunday that Ms Zahed's application was cancelled 'before we even got to character grounds'.
'Before we even got to the character grounds issue, she wasn't eligible for the visa that had been issued and the department administratively cancelled the visa,' Mr Burke told Sky News, calling the application 'unusual'.
'This was someone from Gaza who was not going through the humanitarian visa process that we've got in place, or even for a visitor visa for that matter, but who'd applied on the entertainment stream, where the presumption of that visa is you are coming for a fixed tour, where the tickets are being sold, the dates are all in place, and your intention is then to return to the country you came from.
'Now, you can see a few reasons there why as soon as it was brought to … the attention of people more senior in the department, they looked at it and thought, 'Hang on, this individual is not eligible for this particular visa.''
As for the thousands of Palestinians who have been granted visas since the start of the war in Gaza, Mr Burke insisted all approved had been double-checked.
He also said only 'about half the people … for whom visas had been issued ended up actually getting here' because of border closures.
The figure is unclear, but human rights groups have put it at about 1300.
'We would have had something in the order of close to 1000 visas where people were trapped in Gaza,' Mr Burke said, adding that those stuck in Gaza had dropped to 'not too much more' than half of that.
'Now some of that will be that people decided they didn't want to come to Australia, some of it will be people (who) found another pathway out of Gaza, some of it will be that those people are no longer alive.
'There's a few different reasons for the reduction in numbers.
'Overwhelmingly now the people who are in that visa group, they had the initial check against the movement alert list.
'We've had (the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) go through everybody on the list twice now, and so they are in fact the most highly checked cohort that we've ever had.'
Though, he pointed out they 'are still in a situation though, where overwhelmingly, they're not able to leave'.
Ms Zahed has been living in tents with her young family for much of the 22-month war in Gaza – a conflict triggered by Hamas' October 7 attacks.
The militant group killed more than 1200 in the unprecedented assault, including whole families.
Fighters took hundreds more hostage as they retreated into Gaza, where dozens remain captive.
The Herald Sun revealed on Friday that Ms Zahed praised the attack on social media at the time.
'We woke up and got God's kingdom,' she wrote of the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.
She made her visa application with the support of Melbourne artist Matt Chun, who claims to have raised tens of thousands of dollars to help Ms Zahed, her husband and four children make their way to Australia.
Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation in Australia and the Albanese government has repeatedly condemned the October 7 attacks.
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