Immigration officials are still waiting for permission from doctors to interview two stowaways who survived more than three weeks in the locked cargo hold of a ship bound for Australia, while two companions died.
The stowaways, aged 22 and 32, are still undergoing physical and mental tests in Fremantle Hospital after being helped off the 12,000 tonne bulk carrier Furness Karumba when it docked in Kwinana, 20km south of Perth, on Tuesday.
Until doctors give the all clear, immigration officials and police will have to wait to ask the men about their gruesome journey locked up with two bodies and thousands of tonnes of phosphate fertiliser bound for WA from Morocco.
The post-mortem examinations on the two men, who are thought to have died from either starvation, dehydration or suffocation, are also yet to be carried out.
The survivors are now understood to be from Morocco and Mauritania, but the age, nationality and identity of the dead stowaways is still not known, as they carried no identification.
However, the Australian Western Sahara Association (AWSA) said that with the ship leaving from Laayoune, the men were probably fleeing from Western Sahara, whose legal status as a territory and sovereignty from Morocco remains unresolved.
"It is no surprise that some people will try and flee the brutal regime in Western Sahara," said AWSA president Nick O'Neill.
"The death of the two men hoping for a better life overseas is part of the tragedy of the Western Sahara. The rest is even worse."
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