Lawyers for 153 asylum seekers aboard an Australian Customs ship will appear in the High Court in Melbourne as their bid to prevent the ship's passengers being returned to Sri Lanka continues.
The lawyers say because the asylum seekers' boat was intercepted 27 kilometres from Christmas Island they were within Australian waters.
The asylum seekers' lawyers say the decision not to take them to Australia did not fall within the bounds of "legal reasonableness".
"It was otherwise disproportionate and therefore invalid," their statement claim says.
They also say their clients should not be transferred to offshore immigration detention centres on Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
This is because the two countries are not signatories to international laws that prevent victims of persecution being returned to their persecutors.
The directions hearing on Friday follows a temporary reprieve granted last week that barred the asylum seekers being sent back to Sri Lanka.
The lawyers are demanding "procedural fairness" and an acknowledgement that border protection authorities acted unlawfully.
They say the asylum seekers, now in the ship somewhere in the Indian Ocean, are being locked up in windowless cabins.
They claim mothers and children have been separated from fathers and husbands and they have had their belongings, including their phones, confiscated.
Almost all of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers are unable to communicate in English and none has been asked why they left Sri Lanka.
Last week the federal government gave an undertaking to give three days notice before moving the group.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/24489320/asylum-seeker-case-returns-to-high-court/
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