Tamil Tigers pair fly in to have baby

FEDERAL authorities will allow a couple ASIO deemed a threat to national security to have their baby on the Australian mainland.

And Australian taxpayers will foot the bill.

The impending birth of the Tamil couple's third child forced the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to concede last night that the pair would be flown to Perth within 12 weeks because the hospital on Christmas Island, which is excised from Australia for migration purposes, is not equipped or staffed for births.

No child has been born on the island for about 15 years; residents and asylum-seekers are sent to the West Australian capital when they reach the 34th week of their pregnancies, usually with their immediate families.

The woman, who is six months pregnant, is among Tamil asylum-seekers rescued by the Oceanic Viking and offered a special deal by the Rudd government last October. She was on the Australian Customs boat with the couple's two children, now aged six and three.

On December 29 last year, the woman, her children and three Sri Lankan men from the Oceanic Viking flew via charter aircraft from Indonesia directly to Christmas Island.

There, she and the children were reunited with her husband. He had arrived by boat a few months earlier and has also been issued an adverse security finding by ASIO. The family now lives under guard in a converted construction camp on Christmas Island and are indefinitely detained.

Though ASIO's finding makes it legally impossible for Australia to accept the woman, Australia would be in breach of its human rights obligations if it returned her to Sri Lanka. This is because, like the 77 others aboard the Oceanic Viking during the standoff, she is a legal refugee designated by the UNHCR.

In March, The Australian reported that the woman lived and worked in the Vanni district in Sri Lanka's north, which was controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The woman's brother told The Australian that his sister had been employed in the de facto justice system set up by the LTTE, which was described by the US State Department as "agents" of the Tamil Tigers.

There are three other Sri Lankans from the Oceanic Viking -- all men -- who are in limbo too, having also received adverse security assessments from ASIO.