Mentally ill asylum seeker sent away from promised treatment on 5,400km Qantas round trip

The Australian Border Force transferred a seriously mentally ill man to Perth from Melbourne, where a youth mental health facility was preparing to treat him – then took almost a month to bring him back.

On Tuesday, after being flown 2,700km across the country, admitted to hospital emergency or psychiatric departments six times, held in various forms of detention, then flying another 2,700km, the young man was finally taken to the facility that had originally offered to treat him.

The shock early-morning transfer from the Melbourne detention centre, Mita, to Perth, was on a commercial Qantas flight – just one day after the Qantas chief executive, Alan Joyce, proclaimed that the company would not be silent on social issues.

The young asylum seeker was removed from the Melbourne detention centre in the early hours of 19 September, allegedly without warning and without consulting the external health professionals who were arranging to have him readmitted to the Melbourne facility. No reason for the transfer was given, as far as Guardian Australia is aware.

Guardian Australia understands that a bed had been made available before he was taken to Melbourne airport under guard and put on the Qantas flight.

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Friends and visitors had expressed serious concern for his mental health while inside Mita, citing apparent psychosis, with a longtime visitor describing him as one of the most ill young men she had come across in detention.

After he was transferred to Perth he was sent to the Yongah Hill detention centre but then admitted to various WA hospitals six times.

In at least one of those instances, he was discharged by doctors who said they could not help him and he needed to return to Melbourne to receive the care arranged for him there. Instead, he was returned to detention.

After more than three weeks in WA he was eventually flown back to Melbourne, but it took several days for him to be readmitted to the mental health facility.

Guardian Australia was told he had called out “I am being forcibly removed” as he was put on the Qantas flight.

It is understood that detention health staff would have had to clear him to fly, but the extent of that assessment and whether his mental health formed part of it is unclear.

The man’s transfer came less than 24 hours after Joyce told the National Press Club in Canberra that “good companies” would intervene on social and economic issues.

“We’re not going to pull back on what we say on social issues because­ that’s important to our employee­s, our customers, our shareholders,” he said.

Despite repeated requests, Qantas declined to comment either on the circumstances of the flight or whether it contradicted Joyce’s statement.

After publication of this story, a spokesman said: “These are very complex and emotive matters but it’s not for airlines to adjudicate on who should and shouldn’t get to stay in Australia after the government and courts have made their decisions.”

Qantas and Virgin are among a number of international airlines that have been the target of global campaigns calling for them to end their involvement with deportations and immigration detention transfers.

The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, which holds shares in Qantas, has had numerous meetings with the company seeking policy changes.

At the 2018 Qantas AGM, company chairman Leigh Clifford said they didn’t believe the ACCR’s campaign was really about Qantas, but was instead “about finding different ways to put pressure on the Australian Government and the Federal Opposition to change their immigration policy”.

The home affairs department has been criticised for its policy of transferring detainees from centre to centre, away from family, support networks and medical care.

Transfers occur frequently, in part to manage the balance of different cohorts across centres with varying levels of security.

In June the Australian Human Rights Commission found that transfers between centres often occurred without notice. While there could be exceptional circumstances warranting sudden transfers, they did not appear to be justified in all cases and detainees often felt they were being punished, the commission said.

Sister Brigid Arthur, cofounder of the Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project, said the transfers were often both “arbitrary and inexplicable”.

“I think there’s a level of cruelty in this,” she said. “The arbitrary nature of it strikes fear into most of the detainees because they never know when they’re going to be moved. It’s always without warning and usually in the middle of the night or very early morning.

“So one has to ask, is it a measure to extract compliance from people so they’re too frightened to raise issues or in any way rock the boat? If it is, then that’s immoral. It’s a blight on our democracy.”

The Australian Border Force declined to comment on individual cases but a spokesman said transfers of detainees across the detention network were “individually assessed and measures are put in place to ensure the safety of the detainee, staff and contractors, and the public”.

Related: Qantas shareholders push again for airline to refuse involvement in deportations

The ABF spokesman said placement decisions were “part of a process of assessing and managing risk”, medical needs were given priority when making those decisions, and family and community links were “carefully considered”.

Arthur said while some transfers brought detainees closer to where their families lived, many did the opposite, and the separations had a “devastating impact” on transferees and their families.

“There are some cases where people are quite ill and often mentally ill, and are moved to a place where there are fewer mental health facilities or less potential for getting treatment, and in other cases people have family and connections in a place and they’re moved to places where they don’t have any,” she said.

Observers have noted the similarity between the young man’s circumstances and those of Sarwan Aljhelie, who took his own life at Yongah Hill just over a year ago. Aljhelie, whose death sparked riots at the centre, had been transferred without warning from Villawood detention centre in Sydney, near where his parents and three children lived, and less than a month after his third suicide attempt.

• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78