Chartered aircraft used to transport immigration detainees to Christmas Island.
He is currently facing charges over his alleged involvement in a $6 million drug smuggling operation.
The 31-year-old,who has a lengthy criminal record in Australia,was sent on September 1 to the island camp in the Indian Ocean on a specially chartered Airbus A319 in an operation that is likely to cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Illustration:Matt Golding.
The Sunday Age understands Immigration Minister Peter Dutton cancelled his visa and ordered his incarceration in the facility at the request of a senior federal police officer involved in the criminal case.
But the immigration agency's interference in a pending court matter was rejected by Magistrate Suzanne Cameron,who refused to conduct the man's scheduled committal hearing via video link and ordered his return to Melbourne.
Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs and other legal experts have previously flagged concerns that the right to a fair trial could be impeded for detainees because they were unlikely to receive proper access to legal services on the isolated island.
The man will now be returned to Melbourne several days before his committal hearing begins in late October,but sources say Border Force is considering whether it will send him back to Christmas Island if he is again granted bail by a magistrate.