The Baktiyari boys who sought asylum in the Melbourne British Consulate were handed over to Australian Federal police last night and detained at the Maribyrnong detention centre outside Melbourne.

Alamdar and Muntazer Baktiyari (12 and 13) escaped from the Woomera detention centre - a razor-wire hell-hole in the middle of the South Australian desert - on the 28th June.

They are now on their way back to Woomera. At least they will be re-united with their mother, who has been held in detention there and didn't escape.

The boys' father was rumoured to be on his way to Melbourne from Sydney last night. He has been in Australia on a Temporary Protection Visa for 18 months, and was desperate to see his sons again.

Phillip Ruddock, the Minister for Immigration, Multicultural and Aboriginal Affairs (is this a sick joke?) has threatened to withdraw the father's TP Visa. I'm not sure what the official grounds for this are. Maybe Ruddock can't bear to see a family separated, and is doing his best to re-unite the family - on a boat heading away from Australia, or back in Afghanistan where, as Hazaras, they will face the persecution that drove them to come to Australia in the first place.

Ruddock's claim that this family is actually from Pakistan, and that therefore they are liars, "not genuine refugees", "queue-jumpers" etc (insert venomous Liberal party rhetoric to taste) should be taken with a large salt-mine.

The determination that the Baktiyari family are Pakistani was made on the basis of a language test. This involved recording a sample of their speech, then sending it to an outsourced language expert - a firm in Sweden! No appeal or cross-examination of the language analyst is allowed, or possible - in fact, the commercial rules of confidentiality applying to the government's use of this service may well make identification of the analyst and their qualifications impossible. (commercial confidentiality - sounds familiar???)

The most probably course from here is that an attempt will be made to deport the whole family. The British Government must be made aware of the real consequences of their decision to flatly refuse asylum to these two boys.

These consequences are conveniently remote from the "real" world of Whitehall:

Two minors have been handed over to police, to be incarcerated in Maribyrnong detention centre.

They are now being transferred to Woomera - where as you may know, thanks to the actions of the hunger-strikers at Aldwych, 120 people have only recently ended a hunger-strike in protest at the conditions there.

These two boys are being taken back to a place which(according to unanimous opinion from Australian social work, mental health and childcare professionals) causes obscene psychological damage to those held there, including extreme effects on development in young children.

This place has been condemned by Amnesty International, UNHCR and an enormous number of Australian lawyers, social workers, psychologists and doctors.

The decision of the British Government is to hand over a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old to this fate. Some high realpolitikal considerations are considered more important than the brute facts of the matter.

Jack Straw has sunk to the level of Phillip Ruddock.