The RAC said Mr Chegeni had been on Christmas Island for 10 weeks and had arrived in Australia in 2011.
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In Twitter posts written on Monday morning, Mr Davis said: “BREAKING; Christmas Island Detainees are rioting”.
A woman close to a detainee says the riots began after prisoners learned of the death of a refugee who escaped the detention centre two days ago.
Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection said Chegeni’s escape was reported to federal police, who coordinated the search and discovered his body.
“[He] had served time in prison following a fight between detainees at the detention centre”.
“This is another needless detention death”, Mr Rintoul said on Sunday.
“On Saturday morning (November 7) the Department was advised of the escape of an illegal maritime arrival from Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre (CI IDC) by service provider staff”.
The Department of Immigration has been contacted for comment.
Fellow detainee Rikki Downes says, “we are all set up together and taking stock of what’s going on here, we are sick of not being able to do anything, we wanna be with our families this stuff is just too much to bare”.
“Like so many others, Fazel, was suffering the effects of long-term arbitrary detention”.
Ian Rintoul said his mental health situation’s deteriorated since then and he obviously needed the kind of help you can’t get while in detention.
Rintoul said detainees were told at a Sunday meeting that Chegeni’s body was found “in the jungle” and that he had been dead “for a few time”. “He is a victim of the punitive detention regime that cares nothing for the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees”, he said.
“There are grave questions to answer as to how this man died, and by whose hand”.
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Refugee advocate Pamela Curr said she was very distressed to hear about the death.
