A major writers’ advocacy group has condemned the detention and deportation of an Australian writer from the US as “gravely concerning”, while the US administration rejected the suggestion he was targeted because of his political beliefs as “unequivocally false”.
Alistair Kitchen, a former Columbia University postgraduate student, was last week detained at Los Angeles airport before being deported back to Melbourne. He said he was “explicitly” told by US border officials he had been held because of his writing on pro-Palestinian campus protests.
