Australia to shut notorious Woomera camp

Australia is to shut a former British missile testing base in the Outback that was converted into a notorious detention centre for asylum seekers.

Woomera, 1,120 miles west of Sydney, will close next month, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said today.

Conditions at the camp were deemed the worst by human rights groups among the country’s seven detention centres.

Woomera is a group of small buildings surrounded by razor wire-topped fences and patrolled by armed guards.

It is currently home to 77 detainees, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq, and has been plagued by riots, hunger strikes, break-outs, arson and suicide attempts by detainees demanding official refugee status that would let them stay in Australia. It once held more than 500 inmates.

An all-party parliamentary committee in 2001 condemned the detention camps for human rights abuses and declared that Woomera was the worst.

The United Nations and human rights groups have also harshly criticised the camps, where some detainees have languished for more than three years.