Sheikh Leghaei's three sons Sadegh, Ali and Reza. Their father was expelled from Australia as a suspected spy. Photo: Louise Kennerley

Australia violated the human rights of an Iranian sheikh and his family when it expelled him without adequately explaining why ASIO suspected him of being a threat to national security, a United Nations committee has ruled.

"When I read the verdict I was in tears of joy," Sheikh Mansour Leghaei told Fairfax Media on Thursday, "because I thought, at last, I may be able prove to Australians that I did not betray them."

It is almost five years since he was forced to return to Iran with his wife and teenage daughter, leaving behind three adult sons in Sydney.

The UN Human Rights Committee concludes that Australia is obliged to compensate Dr Leghaei, whose 16 years in Sydney ended in June 2010, following a fruitless 13-year legal battle against ASIO's secret findings about him.

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The committee found Australia interfered unlawfully and arbitrarily in his long-settled family life. It has given the Federal Government 180 days to provide an "effective and enforceable remedy", including the opportunity for Dr Leghaei to challenge the refusal to grant him a permanent visa.

"We are very grateful," his 25-year-old son, Ali, said. He and brother Reza have married in their father's absence, while Dr Leghaei is yet to meet his first two grandchildren delivered by the wives of Reza and his 30-year-old twin, Sadegh.

ASIO had no obligation to tell Dr Leghaei, as a non-citizen, why he was suspected of "acts of interference". And his common-law right to procedural fairness was overridden by the risk to national security in disclosing ASIO's reasons, the Federal Court found.

Dr Leghaei's unsuccessful court challenges, however, yielded some hints.

In July 1995, when returning from a brief holiday in Iran, he says Sydney Airport officials searched his bag and found $10,000.  He says he did not realise amounts over $5000 had to be declared but that the authorities seemed to accept his explanation: he was delivering a donation from the Islamic Propagation Organisation, a publisher of Islamic texts in Tehran, to an Islamic centre in Melbourne.

He only discovered in 2002, in the process of launching legal action against ASIO, that the airport officers in 1995 had also taken an exercise book from his bag and copied about half of its 150 pages. The book contained his student notes, in which he had quoted scholars on the subject of jihad.

ASIO's translation, he says, did not resemble his own words and added inflammatory material about the killing of infidels and a Muslim's duty to kill the "enemies of Islam".  

"The word infidel doesn't exist in my book," Dr Leghaei told Fairfax Media in 2010.

Asked again on Thursday if he had ever been a spy for Iran, he said: "It's the biggest joke of the century."

As the Shia imam at the Husain Islamic Centre at Earlwood, he had promoted inter-faith dialogue and had the support of Christian, Jewish and Hindu leaders during his battle to stay in Australia.

Speaking from the historical city of Esfahan in central Iran, where he now lives and lectures at university, Dr Leghaei said he would return to Sydney if the Australian Government allows it.

"Well, obviously," he said. "My family is there; my community is there; my heart is there. I consider myself Australian."

But lawyer Ben Saul, who acted as Dr Leghaei's counsel in his UN complaint, cautions that the committee's finding is not legally binding on Australia – despite it urging an "enforceable remedy".

A spokeswoman for Attorney-General George Brandis said: "The Government will give careful consideration, in good faith, to the views of the committee and respond within 180 days as is required."

Dr Saul noted Australia's "poor record" of complying with such findings.

"The UN hasn't said Australia must allow Dr Leghaei to return to Australia immediately," Dr Saul said. "But it has said he should get a fair hearing and one way of facilitating that would be to allow him back to see some more of the evidence and put his version of events."

It did not challenge sovereignty or national security, he said, and if at the end of that process it was clear Dr Leghaei was a risk, his expulsion could stand.

"But if a fair process established he isn't really a threat, then my expectation would be that Australia would allow him to complete his application for permanent residency."

Dr Leghaei's daughter, Fatima, was 14 when he left Australia. "She has suffered the most," he says. A good student here, she had not spoken or written Farsi and consequently was unable to complete the equivalent of the HSC in Iran.

Ali Leghaei regards the suspicion that his father was a spy as absurd.  "We have always lived peacefully in Australia," he says.

In December, Dr Leghaei had a visa to enter New Zealand for a lecture but was turned back to Iran after 14 hours at the airport – the day after Iranian refugee Man Haron Monis and two of his hostages died in the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney.

Dr Leghaei finds irony in rumours that Monis had spied on him. "I have no knowledge if that is true or not. But why would anyone spy one me? I have nothing to hide."