‘I still have nightmares’: Surviving Australia’s Kangaroo Point

In March, Australia released 50 men detained at its Kangaroo Point immigration centre in Brisbane. Many had already spent years at island detention centres, while hopes for a new life faded.

Brisbane, Australia – In the early hours of the morning, security guards at an inner-city motel and serviced apartment complex in Brisbane would begin knocking on each door. They were conducting a headcount, checking that everyone was still inside their room, and still alive, just as they had every day since the start of 2019. This was Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point Central Hotel & Apartments, a makeshift immigration detention centre which the Australian government terms “an alternative place of detention” (APOD). Until this week, it had been used to confine people like 32-year-old Iraqi Ahmad Albardan and other refugees and asylum seekers who were detained at either of Australia’s offshore processing facilities – Nauru and Manus Island, both around 4,000km from Australia’s shores – but had been sent to Australia for medical treatment under the country’s now repealed medevac law.