Former Howard Government minister Kevin Andrews and AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty seem to be continuing their attempts to blame each other for the Haneef debacle. You’ll recall a couple of days ago that a “source”, most probably Keelty or somebody close to him, claimed that Andrews had cancelled Haneef’s visa without bothering to tell the AFP. Now we have the bite back from Andrews. From the Oz:
FORMER immigration minister Kevin Andrews had no idea of powerful evidence of Mohamed Haneef’s innocence when he controversially revoked the visa of the then terrorism suspect last year. Mr Andrews will tell the Rudd government-ordered inquiry into the bungled case, which opens today, that Australian Federal Police did not inform him of evidence debunking allegations against Dr Haneef’s second-cousin Sabeel Ahmed - allegations that had led to the subsequent terrorism charge against the Gold Coast doctor.
These guys were supposed to be in charge of protecting us from Scary Terryrists - one, of course, still is. Thank your favourite deity that there seems to be so few actual Scary Terryrists in Australia, or we’d really be in trouble…
Robert Merkel and all:
These blokes - and several more whose Teflon(TM)coating is still working superbly well.
Now you can see why I am alert …. alarmed …. and very frightened.
There are two problems here.
1. The failure of the AFP/Keelty to provide (existing) evidence of innocence.
2. The failure of DIMIA/Andrews to provide (non-existing) evidence of guilt.
Incidentally, Greg Barns had a piece in Crikey today saying that the “source”’s claims were contradicted by emails obtained by Haneef’s lawyers under FOI.
It all seems pretty simple to me. The australian public sacked the hapless and hopeless Andrews, now Rudd must ditch Keelty. It’ll be no great loss, this is the same idiot who allowed drug traffickers into Indonesia in the full knowledge of what would happen to them, despite having plenty of evidence to arrest them here. The despicable act of off-shoring and co-opting an Indonesian death penalty was far worse than the whole Haneef thing. He was little more than an extension of the Howard regime, is useless, and should be sacked.
Yep. Sack Keelty.
David Rubie (4):
Agree totally. I’d also add Keelty’s repeated pronouncements during the Corby trial that her evidence was flimsy. Doesn’t matter whether he was right or not. I don’t want an Australian facing a potential death sentence to have her defence sabotaged by our Chief Cop.
This wasn’t an act of idiocy. It was an act of bastardry.
Ditto for Keelty’s repeated pronouncements during the Corby trial.
Wasn’t it just the other day that Keelty confirmed that 50 Feds are still working on Haneef’s case?
“Powerful evidence of innocence”? I thought the state [AFP and Andrews] needed powerful evidence of guilt!
The presumption I guess would be that the presumption of innocence has no relevance whatsoever in the minds of Andrews and the AFP.
The AFP has been shopping low level mules to Thai, Viet and other SE Asian source nations for years, at least since 1994 to certain knowledge.
During the trial of the Sydney airport whistleblower last year it came out that the AFP had downloaded the suppressed data & reports into their intelligence (sic!) system long before Corby was even busted, so he knew that he was lying in his many sub judice comments during her trial.
Never mind sack, charge him with gross dereliction of duty or at least culpable incompetence.
Everyone:
What worries me is the secrecy surrounding all parts of the inquiry.
Yes, there must. of necessity, be closed sessions where current secret operations, state-of-the-art techniques, current officers and persons who are currently “of interest” can be freely and robustly discussed. That’s reasonable.
But, in a parliamentary democracy, to lock the public out of the whole inquiry …. that’s questionable.
I love it!
Either Andrews is incompetent for not ensuring ministerial responsibility over his department (the blame Kealty defense) or… he’s a biased politico playing power games for the bigger fish…
Either way he looses! WooHoo!
That said, the AFPs reputation internationally has never been that flash and after Haneef it was shot completely… time for some reform eh?
Keelty’s got to go. Send a firm message to the AFP and hopefully put someone in the position who can do the job with the competence and apolitical stance required in such a job.
Even scarier than the scary terrorists is that this bunch of self-serving, mendacious halfwits was in charge of this country for 11.5 years and that they still have a loud-mouthed cheer squad like Albrechtson, Ackerman, Bolt and co spruiking for them!
“The australian public sacked the hapless and hopeless Andrews”
Actually his (and sadly my) electorate comfortably voted him back in.
P.S. Anyone else have problems with undo/redo in the comments submission box here?