A short note - it looks like Haneef has been cleared of all charges and the political pressure on his arrest and detention has been criticised by civil rights lawyers. Good news, but I really hope further action is taken against the AFP and the politicians. Keep an eye open to see if he is still deported by the immigration minister's draconian act of revoking his visa.
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John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
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Haneef cleared
Category: Politics • Race and politics
Posted on: July 27, 2007 7:31 AM, by John S. Wilkins
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Comments
Seems that revoking the visa was just a tactical ploy to let them keep him in detention while they continued to check him out. Given that he's now being allowed to go home and the authorities are admitting they screwed up, deportation looks pretty unlikely. btw, when wannabe suicide bombers use your sim card in the detonator and you are booked on a one way trip out of the country the day after, is it so unreasonable for the police to err on the side of caution?
Posted by: Jonathan Vause | July 27, 2007 7:52 AM
But that's the whole point. They didn't use his SIM card for any such thing, nor did they ever have evidence that the suicide bombers were plannign to use it. It was simply that his cousin, who did know of the plot, happened to have the phone in his possession when he was arrested. The AFP, the DPP and the government screwed up royally on this.
Posted by: John Wilkins | July 27, 2007 7:59 AM
The SIM was NOT used in one of the phones that was set up as a detonator, and this has been known for some time. Those officials who claimed it was were either incompetent or lying. Neither reflects well on the Australian justice system. The card he has was given to a cousin and was found in that cousins house in Liverpool. That cousin has not been charged with any terrorism related offence.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 27, 2007 8:02 AM
Ouch. The way that inaccurate ideas find their way into the media is curious - see the plethora of nonsense that was apparently leaked about de Menezes, and not corrected for weeks, when they knew he had been innocent from day one. At risk getting slapped down again, however, doesn't the fact remain that it was reasonable to check him out, they have, he's in the clear, and that's the end of it?
Posted by: Jonathan Vause | July 27, 2007 8:50 AM
Reasonable to check him out. Yes.
But to do this, they held him for a fortnight using the terror laws and probably would have kept him locked up still if his lawyer didn't contest the detention. Then they stopped using the terror laws to hold him (without charge) and charged him. His lawyer asked for bail, which was granted (because the charge was so weak).
By that stage it was pretty obvious that something was wrong with the prosecution case. The pollies then stepped in and took his visa away so he could still be held, even though he would have been under scrutiny from his bail conditions and had his passport with held.
Now a further fortnight later he is allowed out into the community (like his bail conditions would have allowed anyway!)
However, he is far from "in the clear". The DPP has said there were some mistakes in their procedures. The head of the police has said they haven't done anything wrong (not their fault!) and they are still keeping an eye on Haneef (so he really is guilty!). The pollies are all saying that they never said he was guilty anyway (except that there's been a month of finger pointing) but their original decision to take his visa away (based on the questionable evidence) still stands (although they will reluctantly have another look at it).
No one will _say_ he is in the clear, because that's an admission that it was all a megasize stuff up.
Simply put, "someone" grabbed Haneef in response to the original Glasgow bombing and made a big deal about pulling a terrorist. Some others seeking political mileage from the incident then jumped on the band wagon too. Unfortunately they then couldn't find any meaningful link to the bombing. Rather than cautiously let him go after a couple of days (and keep an eye on him) with a "sorry, we were a bit overzealous", there has been a concerted effort to keep Haneef himself out of view and feed damaging information about him to the media.
What a mess, really. Far from the end of it.
Posted by: stephenk | July 27, 2007 9:49 AM
There's this ugly old cliche about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions. The problem is that I'm not even sure there are good intentions at work here. What happens when you get bureaucratic face-saving coupled with the power to detain someone for great lengths of time without charge? This is what you get.
Surely by now you must realize why our institutions are supposed to work the way they somehow don't if you happen to be of the wrong ethnic type in the West.
Posted by: Aaron Clausen | July 27, 2007 12:29 PM
Listening to various Aussi officials on the news today they are not giving his visa back, he is still under investigation, there was nothing wrong in lying about his phone card after all he might still be a terrorist... and so on and so on... It doesn't look as if the Aussi authorities have let up at all. They were forced to release him from prison after it was revealed that they had lied about the phone card and if they can find a way to do it they will throw him back into jail immediately if not sooner.
Posted by: Thony C. | July 27, 2007 12:32 PM
Well, we are dealing with a government that still thinks censorship has any real power in the information ( http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2007/07/27/australia-censorship-laws.html ).
Posted by: Aaron Clausen | July 27, 2007 3:03 PM
Good luck for your Sunday session.
Cheers.
Posted by: KiwiInOz | July 28, 2007 8:31 AM
And it looks as if the worst case scenario has played out. Haneef's visa has not been returned, and he's being "allowed" to leave. So the victim gets further victimized while the real scoundrels are permitted to save face. What a shameful display.
If I was of darker complexion, or had a Middle Eastern-sounding name, I think I'd probably be pretty nervous about being in Australia.
Posted by: Aaron Clausen | July 28, 2007 11:17 AM
Kevin Andrews is also claiming that he's still suspicious of Haneef, and that he is in possession of 'secret' information that proves he was right.
Posted by: Silver | July 29, 2007 8:37 PM
Uh, yeah... right. Of course... and we should just trust the AFP and the minister because they have so much credibility on this issue so far.
Posted by: John Wilkins | July 30, 2007 10:13 AM
You should read about Maher Arar, the Canadian scooped up by American authorites and sent to Syria where he was detained and tortured ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/ ). The worst part about this is that even though the Canadian government has admitted it screwed up, American authorities won't let the man travel to the states because they aren't convinced he's not a threat.
What it all boils down to, at the end of the day, is face-saving. Better to slander an innocent man than to have to publicly admit that there has been a major screw up. In Arar's case, because he was a Canadian citizen, and Canadian authorities played a rather large role (that they tried to conceal later on) in his deportation by American authorities to Syria, the outcry was substantial.
Perhaps if more Australians cared, but because the man isn't an Australian, I suspect most people won't notice... until the authorities come for them with trumped-up or non-existent evidence.
Posted by: Aaron Clausen | July 30, 2007 12:05 PM