SYDNEY, July 19: The Australian government is trying to cancel the temporary protection visa of the father of two boys who escaped the infamous Woomera Detention Centre three weeks ago and then made an unsuccessful attempt on Thursday to apply for asylum in Britain.

The boys, who were handed over to the authorities, had returned to Woomera on Friday morning while their father was desperately trying to find a country that could accept them as refugees.

The government says Ali Bakhtiari, father of the 13-year-old Alamdar and 12-year-old Montazar, is from Pakistan and not from Afghanistan as he had claimed to get the refugee visa. The Immigration Department is trying to revoke the visa and send him to Woomera Detention Centre in South Australia where his two sons, three daughters, wife and brother have been detained for several months.

Prime Minister John Howard says he believes they are from Pakistan.

“There has been a judgment made that they are not refugees. I hope that they don’t remain in there (detention centre) indefinitely. I hope that arrangements can be made for them to return to their country from which it is believed they originally came, which is Pakistan,” said Mr Howard while talking to journalists on Friday.

Ali Bakhtiari angrily rejected the claim that he lied about being an Afghan national to get the refugee visa and said he would die as an Afghan.

Ali Bakhtiari, who lives in Sydney, had entered Australia illegally and was granted the temporary protection visa as an Afghan refugee. His brother followed the same route and brought Bakhtiari’s wife and five children to Australia through human smugglers on a boat from Indonesia. They were detained and kept in Woomera under Australia’s mandatory detention policy.

Woomera Detention Centre has been the scene of many violent protests during the past few months and was criticized by refugee groups for inhuman living conditions.

Bakhtiari’s sons Alamdar and Montazar made headlines in Australia when they escaped the detention centre in March this year only to be captured and put back in Woomera. They managed another escape from Woomera three weeks back and appeared this Thursday with a refugee advocate at the British consulate in Melbourne to claim the political asylum, rejected instantly by the British government.

They were handed over to the immigration department, spent a night in a Melbourne detention centre and were brought to Woomera Friday morning by a chartered flight. In an interview from inside the centre after their return, Montazar said he was disappointed their bid for freedom had failed.

“I am with my mother, but in 22 days I saw everything. I was feeling very good and then I came back to Woomera. It is very weird for me,” said 12-year-old Montazar. However, Alamdar said he was pleased to be sitting with his mother and uncle.

The boys didn’t know that their father had travelled from Sydney to Melbourne to try to see them. The Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, has denied that the boys’ father was deliberately prevented from meeting them in Melbourne.