Pakistani? Afghani? Does it matter?

To turn Mazhar into a Pakistani was the most bizarre distortion of the truth that I had ever seen. His birth certificate was obtained by DIMIA just weeks after his birth, a certificate the family did not know existed. It stated that both Roqia and Ali were Afghan citizens who had been married in Afghanistan.

I think at this point Ms Narelle Lee (from DIMIA), went completely insane. On January 13, 2004 she wrote to the Pakistan embassy to tell them that Mr Asghar Ali had been verified as a Pakistani national and that she wanted Mazhar to be declared a Pakistani citizen.

She enclosed an Australian Certificate of Identity which seems to have been rejected by the Pakistani embassy so on February 5 she phoned a Mr Wali at the embassy to ask him to follow up.

The next day she spoke to the embassy again and then faxed them a copy of Mazhar's birth certificate demanding that he be confirmed as a Pakistani citizen. She requested the return of the Certificate of Identity at that time and it looks like she received a letter from the embassy stating that Mazhar was the son of Asghar Ali Bakhtiari and was a Pakistani citizen due to being the son of a Pakistani.

Each time these letters had been presented to the Federal Court and the High Court, the letter explaining how he became a Pakistani citizen was not presented, so I guess it was reasonable for the courts to believe this was was genuine. But it is beyond belief that a birth certificate stating the Afghan nationality of a new born could have been used to turn him into a Pakistani.

So determined were DIMIA to rid themselves and Australia of the Bakhtiyari children they used a tiny baby.