A Pakistani national who came to Australia 17 years ago has been holed up in immigration detention since November 2012 with little prospect of being repatriated to his homeland any time soon, or even resettled in a third country.

It’s one of those unsettling circumstances where the courts have accepted there is little they can do in the face of someone facing indefinite detention without charge.

In numerous decisions of the refugee review tribunal, the federal circuit court and the federal court of Australia this detainee has been anointed with the soulless sobriquet of “SZSZM”.

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In his latest application that went before Justice Nye Perram, SZSZM desperately pleaded to be sent to Nauru or Papua Guinea, rather than have his detention at Villawood further prolonged.

He emigrated with his parents from Pakistan to Australia when he was 11 years old. In 2006, he and his family were granted permanent residence, but unlike his parents he never applied for Australian citizenship.

He became addicted to heroin, which led to a “substantial criminal history”. On 17 October 2012 his permanent residency visa was cancelled on character grounds. A few months later he applied for a protection visa, claiming to fear harm “as an outsider” if he was deported to Pakistan.

He claimed that Pakistan is a dangerous country and that he did not share the dominant view of Islam. He thought he might be kidnapped and that the authorities would not offer him protection because the police were corrupt.

A delegate of the minister for immigration accepted that SZSZM did have a genuine fear of returning to Pakistan, although he found the fear could not be established objectively.

Curiously, one of the grounds of the visa refusal was that there was no evidence SZSZM would have to disclose his criminal history and so jeopardise his employment prospects in Pakistan.

The refugee review tribunal affirmed the delegate’s decision on the protection visa and an appeal to the federal circuit court was also dismissed.

In a further appeal to the federal court, he claimed the refugee review tribunal wrongly required him to hide his criminal history to avoid persecution. He relied on a high court case where it was held that if the RRT required two homosexuals who were to be deported to live discreetly in order to avoid persecution in their country of nationality, it would have fallen into jurisdictional error.

The federal court dismissed SZSZM’s appeal as it found no evidence or material to connect his criminal history to a condition of the refugee convention or to suggest that any unnecessary disclosure of criminal history would expose the appellant to harm from religious extremists.

By December 2016, SZSZM was back before the federal court claiming that the commonwealth was in breach of the Migration Act because it failed to satisfy his request that he be removed from immigration detention and returned to Pakistan.

The act provides that an unlawful noncitizen, who asks the minister in writing, should be removed “as soon as reasonably practicable”.

He first made this request on 20 November 2015. Justice Nye Perram in the federal court revealed a sequence of ever widening bureaucratic cracks through which the applicant was falling. This time the shortcomings were not on the part of Australian immigration officials and consequently the minister was not in breach of the legislation.

The day the applicant requested removal DIBP forwarded documentation to the consulate general of Pakistan and sought a valid passport. Repatriation was planned for 15 December 2015.

On 26 November 2015 the Pakistan government told the department that it had recently devised a “new comprehensive procedure for effectively and efficiently processing deportations of people from various countries back to Pakistan”. It required further documentation to be forwarded to the consulate.

On 9 December 2015 the secretary of DIBP emailed the Pakistani consulate confirming the relevant documents had been forwarded and attaching a copy of the itinerary. It advised that the removal date had now been set for 8 January 2016.

On 21 December 2015 the consulate advised that the “deportation has been referred to our Ministry of Interior”.

On 4 January 2016 repatriation arrangements were cancelled, as the Pakistan consulate had not responded to several department emails.

On 25 January 2016 the department decided that confirmation of arrangements with the Pakistani government would be required before attempting any further removals. This followed a refusal to admit two other Pakistani nationals whom the department secretary attempted to remove that month.

Months of back and forth ensued between the immigration department and its Pakistani contacts. This included the Ministry of Interior in Pakistan; departmental representatives in Islamabad; the Pakistan high commission; the NSW Pakistan consulate; Islamabad post; and the Pakistani federal investigation agency.

On 31 August 2016, there was a successful removal from Australia of a Pakistani national under the new “comprehensive procedure for effectively and efficiently processing deportations”. However, that day, the Pakistan consulate emailed the department advising that it was still awaiting a decision on the identity of the applicant.

Perram noted the department had been contacting the consulate about once a month to find out how the passport application is progressing:

I have no reason to think that that the bureaucracy [in Pakistan] would have been provoked into action any more than it was by fortnightly or even weekly telephone calls or emails from the department.

SZSZM submitted that the department had not sufficiently explored the availability of other countries to which he might be sent, however the judge did not accept that the DIBP was obliged to identify countries the applicant might be permitted to enter, given the applicant hadn’t identified any himself.

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Such was the applicant’s despair that he submitted the department could have tried for third-party resettlement in Papua new Guinea or Nauru. Perram found it would be unreasonable to require the secretary to attempt to resettle “a person experiencing delays in the issue of a passport” in a third country. And there things rest – at a standstill.

The option of a protection visa has been closed off, as has been the possibility of moving the department to deport him to Pakistan or a third country.

The upshot is that after nearly five years SZSZM is still in detention at Villawood with little sign that the Pakistan authorities will shake a leg and get him a passport any time soon.