The Kiribati government has suspended three appeal judges who decided a deportation dispute in favour of an Australian-born judge married to the country’s opposition leader, amid a deepening legal crisis in the Pacific Island nation.

In a decision last month, the Kiribati Court of Appeal – retired New Zealand justices Peter Blanchard, Rodney Hansen and Paul Heath – declared invalid an attempt by the government to deport Australian David Lambourne, a former solicitor-general of Kiribati who was appointed to its High Court in 2018.

All three Court of Appeal judges have now been suspended from office by Kiribati President Taneti Maamau, leaving the country without any appeal judges. All judges of the High Court have also been suspended, leaving only a registrar in place.

The Court of Appeal had said in its judgment in the Lambourne case that “no attempt has been made by the Attorney-General to explain how Mr Lambourne could rationally be considered a security risk”, as claimed by the Kiribati government in seeking to deport him.

Lambourne is a long-time resident of Kiribati and lives with his wife, opposition leader Tessie Lambourne, in the nation’s capital, South Tarawa.

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Tessie Lambourne, a former ambassador to Taiwan, recently accused the government of “bending over backwards to accommodate the interests of China” after it withdrew Kiribati from the Pacific Islands Forum, the key diplomatic body in the Pacific.

“My assessment is that maybe China wants to isolate us from the rest of the forum,” she told SBS in July.

The government had sought to stop Lambourne from re-entering the country after a trip to Australia, but he returned last month on a visitor visa that did not allow him to work as a judge. That visa has now expired and he has not been issued with a new visa.