Combating Terrorism One Case at a Time
Dr. Mohammed Haneef leaves England for a job in Queensland. He hands his pre-paid mobile phone SIM card to a relative; why not? It won’t work in Australia and still has a couple of pounds sterling on it. The card turns up in the car used in one of the failed attacks. England asks that Australian Federal Police investigate. Haneef heads to the airport the next day, with a one-way ticket to India, where his family is, including his wife and brand-new baby. He’s arrested. He’s held for days while the police continue investigations. He’s charged and granted bail, his passport confiscated and a requirement that he check in with the authorities every couple of days. But instead of going to the home the police tore to shreds during their search, his visa is revoked and he’s off to Villawood detention centre. Or he could stay in jail, if he’d rather. Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, says Haneef “failed the character test”, and I guess there’s an argument to be made that his “reckless” support of a terrorist organisation (here, take my SIM card; I can’t use it), does show him to be undesirable, but how is justice seen to be done here? He hasn’t been tried, let alone convicted, and that’s a fairly long bow to draw in court, although a jury trial seems a fairly foregone conclusion in the current climate. Isn’t this just a way of subverting the legal system? And yet, PM-in-waiting, Kevin Rudd, will keep the current anti-terrorism laws that allow all this. If Haneef is convicted, that’s one thing, but he deserves his time in court, just like anyone else.
Update, 27 July: It's unclear whether Dr. Haneef will still be deported, now that the Department of Public Prosecutions has dropped the case against him, but I'd say it's likely. It's also not clear from the initial report whether the case was dropped because the AFP made it too difficult to achieve a conviction or because there just wasn't enough behind the charges in the first place.
17 July 2007
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4 comments:
Whoo boy, do I ever NOT agree with you on this one.
9-11 did happen and alert police work found a guy's cell phone, meant to be a bomb detonator, in a car meant to be the bomb. The guy has a middle Eastern name, is flying ONE WAY to a country full of Muslims. I definitely want him held for serious questioning.
Of course, I also want him released after a thorough investigation of him AND his connections, if no further evidence of terrorist connections turns up but...I think there is enough evidence to keep him watched.
If they've still got him, I want him promptly tried and proven either guilty or innocent. Then I
'd STILL watch him.
These are, as the saying goes, perilous times.
Sure, what you say is reasonable, but misses the point: it's about the visa cancellation by the Immigration minister. As it turns out, a lot of what was reported in the press from the Australian Federal Police was false, and the AFP may have engaged in some low-level illegal interrogation techniques, which themselves would have compromised Haneef's chances at a fair trial. To have Andrews make a very public pronouncement on the visa and the "character test" makes those chances slip even lower, perhaps more so than anything the police have done. People tend to follow the government line a lot more unquestioningly than seems healthy. So if the judge thought Haneef wasn't a serious flight risk - bail was set at only $10K - and his passport was confiscated, what's the point of putting him in the illegal immigration detention center other than to bury him?
Still, the SIM card was with a cousin whose explanation of how the formerly attached -to-the-SIM-card cell phone could have ended up in the car-as-bomb I've not heard. Until I do, I think both the cousin and Dr. Haneef he's another doctor?), should remain as "persons of interest". This Haneef fellow might skip if he's got his passport, etc. I think we should all want him where we can keep an eye on him.
As for whether the government has influenced peublic opinion against him, well so be it. Let Dr. Haneef come out with a strong statement as to both his innocence AND his total rejection of Muslim radicalism and let's see if public opinion swings to his side.
That sort of starts another side issue but, really, I DO think good, faithful Muslims should rise up in indignation at what their radical co-religionists have done and are doing. And I just don't see that much of anywhere.
And another thing...Is it not very curious that so many of the implicated in this case turn out to be doctors or other trained medical personnel?
And as it turns out, the SIM wasn't in the car, but with his cousin, who remains only peripherially involved himself.
Since Haneef's in custody, and by Minister Andrews' action likely to end up in the middle of a desert, it's not easy for him to make any statement, except through his lawyer, and everybody discounts public pronouncements by the defense attorneys, especially when we all know he's a Muslim anyway, right?
It does seem odd that the persons of interest should turn out to be doctors, but it's become fairly well-known at this point that it isn't the underprivileged youth of Muslim nations who are dangerous, outside their own countries, at least, but educated, but marginalized persons living within the communities they come to attack. The September 11 bombers were to a degree anomalous, insofar as they deliberately travelled to Europe and the U.S. to develop into “cells,” but the train bombers in Spain and the 7 July bombers in London fit that profile. Whether we can say this new batch do or what they represent will yet come to light, but from the transcript of Haneef’s interview, he did it tough in Glasgow, and British multiculturalism is known not to be a stand-out success.
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