The Oz reports that the AFP has finally released an unclassified version of their submission to the Clarke inquiry on the investigation of Dr. Mohammed Haneef.
I haven’t had time to read the report yet, but the Oz’s report summarises some of the issues that the AFP claims made them suspicious. What’s new is that they report finding “jihadist” materials in Haneef’s flat, a brochure ‘from the UK branch of an international organisation, which is prescribed terrorist organisation in a number of countries. The brochure includes a reference to “…the brutal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq… the killing and murder of our brothers and sisters and the brutality of British and American foreign policy…”’, as well as some audio files “containing lectures by an author “who has been linked to Al Qaeda”.
As the Oz notes, the AFP hasn’t named the organization nor the author. Given that at this stage it could hardly be sensitive information, you’d have to wonder why not.
Yes, it’s not only the competence of the AFP that is called into question by the whole affair – it’s their good faith.
I have in my bookshelf the Koran, several Bibles, the I Ching and a bunch of L Ron Hubbard’s typing. In the bin I have brochures from Falun Gong, Greens, real estate agents, East Timor Friendship, LaRouche, CEC, Jim’s Fencing, Pizza and Ribs, and a Queensland Lottery.
Lets hope I don’t get raided
DD: the preamble to the submission spends several pages with a “woe is the AFP” rant on how difficult a task terrorism investigations are. Get out the bloody violins :/
FXH: Me too. My browser history contains a whole bunch of stuff on improvised explosives and nuclear weapons design, including the US Army Improvised Munitions Handbook (the road-tested version of the Anarchists’ Cookbook…)
My bookshelf includes various texts by Marx and Engels and/or summarising their writing, volumes of Lenin’s Selected Works including “The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution”, documents of a revolutionary Marxist discussion group I was a member of in Melbourne in the early 1980s, documents of the anarchist club I was a member of in 1979-80, numerous programmatic documents, discussion bulletins, meeting minutes, etc., of the Communist Party of Australia, and a King James Bible which includes texts advocating and approvingly reporting the wholesale slaughter of heretics and infidels, and approvingly reporting the violent disruption of the activities of the merchants and moneylenders by a young man of Middle Eastern appearance wielding a whip made from rope, and the wanton destruction of a herd of swine by the same individual. Oh, and a copy of The Lord of the Rings, a religiously inspired book about a group of young males who, at the instigation of their aged, bearded spiritual leader, travel around the world and incite the destruction of an industrial facility by environmental extremists, suborn a military officer to disobey the orders of his commander in chief, destroy numerous towers and fortresses with massive loss of life by throwing an incendiary device into a volcano, and finally incite and organise an armed revolution in their home country and establish themselves as the country’s political leadership.
AFP, you can obtain my address from the Security and Intelligence Branch of the Queensland Police Service.
My guess is it’s a Hizbo pamphlet. They’re probably easy enough to pick up and lose in your bookcase. Given that even someone like me probably has a Hizbo or Salafi pamphlet or two floating around in her bookcase (and I spend all my time promoting interfaith and social inclusion… well… not all my time… but good chunks of it) – it hardly says anything about Haneef if he *does* have a Hizbo pamphlet in his bookcase.
As for audio lectures – same deal. I regularly surf YouTube looking for Islamic lectures and I *never* stop and say “hmmm… is it possible that this author is linked to some nefarious group” *before* I watch them (who’d have time for watching the actual vids?) If he had a whole bunch of al-Qaida material on his computer that’s one thing, but it sounds like they’re reallllly stretching credibility there.
I might also add that in the period 1979-81 I was a subscriber to Australasian Spartacist. I took out the sub in order to spare myself the ordeal of being harangued by the Sparts’ street sellers at La Trobe University. It didn’t work because they simply moved on to badgering me to buy their US parent party’s paper.
Thanks for the background Yasmin.
One wonders how the AFP would have described a copy of Flowers in the Attic if they’d found that in Haneef’s apartment.
This is all sort of making out like as if Haneef was just picked up at random.
Haneef got one helluva lot better deal than Australians currently being held in Indonesia. When are the street marches outside the Indonesian embassy? Or better still, in the main street of Jakarta?
Haneef got one helluva lot better deal than Australians currently being held in Indonesia.
Well that’s the standard I’d keep myself to.
He also got a shitload better deal than any of the incarcerees at Gitmo.
Which ones SATP? Surely not Schappelle Corby or the Bali 9? They were convicted by proper Indonesian courts after what were, despite ill-informed hysteria back in Australia, fair trials where the evidence was overwhelming and where, had they been tried for the same offences in an Australian court, the verdicts would have been no different.
What other Australians currently being held in Indonesia do you have in mind?
SATP: As far as I can see, the processes by which Corby and the Bali nine were tried and convicted were (and this is indeed not universally the case in the Indonesian courts) fair and reasonable.
By contrast, Haneef was subjected to extended detention and interrogation without charge and on the flimsiest of evidence, some of which was later revealed to be wrong. All the while, the head of the federal police, and the government of the day, were cheering on his continued detention and making all manner of ominous assertions about the nature of his nefarious intentions.
The sentences given to Corby and particularly the Bali nine are manifestly excessive, of course. Incidentally, the fact that the Bali nine were tried in Indonesia, and thus face the death penalty, can also be laid in part at the feet of Mick Keelty, who passed information on to the Indonesian cops without first seeking a guarantee that the death penalty would not be used against them.
I was referring to the five Australians held in Merauke.
Only half of what is written about Haneef has to be true for there to be grounds to pick him up. Indeed if the feds hadn’t they’d have been liable for dereliction of duty.
Haneef hardly had time for his bum to warm the seat in his cell when the (uninformed – how could it be anything else?) agitating on his behalf started.
Contrastingly, supposedly current affairs savvy commenters on this site are (savviness credentials just went down in flames) are seemingly unaware that there are Australians being held without trail in Indonesia, never mind the conditions of their incarceration, or the circumstances of their internment.
Well, Steve, they are being held as illegal immigrants who entered Indonesia without valid (or indeed any) visas. If they tried to do that in Australia then under our Migration Act they would, by law (a law introduced by the Hawke government and one that I thoroughly approve of), be held in mandatory detention.
Why should you expect Indonesians to protest against such a just law which keeps riff-raff out of their country, just as our laws do?
Greg, what is your source of information that they entered Indonesia without valid (or any) visas?
Here we are SATP: http://www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2008/9/23/police-investigate-five-illegal-australians-in-merauke/
The source is the authorities who are holding them. Hmmm….
You got anything better?
SATP, you’ve got me completely stumped there. The reasons given by the people who are holding them for holding them are not good enough for you.
What suspicions you must therefore hold of the AFP and Kevin Andrews about everything they have said about their reasons for holding Haneef. You don’t believe a word of it, by the logic you are applying here. They are liars to be disbelieved.
But yes I do have a better source, from DFAT having provided consular assistance to the detained Australians, having provided them with consular assistance.
But I’m not going to bother to post it. It would be a waste of time. Look it up yourself.
DFAT have stated that all 5 have arrived without valid visas? Really? Who wants to lay money on none of the having valid visas? Real money?
Hmm, so to stretch this one, if anybody were to say, roll up here without a valid visa, the government could throw them in the jug incommunicado & keep them there infdefinitely?
OK, SATP, you got us on that one; I wasn’t aware of the case.
On the merits of their situation, I agree that their case is taking an inordinately long time to be processed; however, they appear to be being held in far better conditions than the residents of our more infamous detention centers were.
One wonders, however, whether the leisurely pace of justice is some kind of payback for Australia’s approach to dealing with Indonesian fisherfolk…
As a further point, if they end up facing charges that carry penalties of years in prison, or their detention continues to drag on, outrage will indeed be called for.
That said, Indonesian standards of justice are a teeny bit irrelevant. I think we’d all agree that we aspire to higher standards.
To look at your questions point by point:
“if anybody were to say, roll up here without a valid visa, the government could throw them in the jug”
Under the Migration Act not only could the government do that, the law explicitly requires it to do so.
“in the jug”
A visa-less Indonesian could expect if detained in Australia to be held at Villawood or a like detention centre, which is effectively “in the jug”.
“incommunicado”
They are not being held incommunicado. They have consular access to Australian authorities.
“& keep them there infdefinitely?”
The High Court has ruled on that one and very reluctantly has held that that is just what the Commonwealth can do:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UWSLRev/2004/7.html
Robert, you have to be kidding. These people arrived in Merauke only six weeks ago. Comopared to the time taken by Australia to process illegal immigrants this is but a blip in time.
Shorter AFP: We screwed up, but here’s some more irrelevant b/s evidence that even Minister Andrews or Inspector Clouseau would have cringed if we had leaked it to the Oz.
Shorter, shorter Gilbert & Sullivan Comic Opera: A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.
GregM: I don’t think I’d be holding up the example of our immigration regime, as indicated by the previous government, as an example.
Furthermore, the situations aren’t the same. There is no doubt that the people involved are Australian citizens. They aren’t seeking to stay in Indonesia. Their home country is happy to have them back, and they are happy and active seeking to come back.
In such circumstances, slapping them on the wrist as expeditiously as possible, and throwing them back on the plane/boat to Australia, would seem to me to be a fair outcome.
Spending months on criminal proceedings with the threat of years in jail seems way over the top.
Robert, I’m not doing that. I am, however, seeking to defend the Indonesians from that reflexive view that SATP has been espousing about our malignant/incompetent/unworthy neighbours to our North. If we seek to judge them against our own standards, as SATP does, then it is fair to examine those standards of ours that we are judging them against.
Umm Yasmin
I like your partly veiled avatar!
Amazon are selling Mein Kampf! To the gallows for Jeff Bezos!
Marr’s article at the Smage:
Rephrasing the last paragraph into a more accurate representation methinks:
Robert@7
Guilty of bad taste in pulp fiction???
Ambigulous@26
Well I wouldn’t anyone to be sexually enticed by my South Park Avatar or anything ;P~~~
As far as I know, nobody has yet explained who provided the information to the AFP about the whereabouts of the SIM card, or when or by whom that information was provided.
This would have been a crucial piece of evidence in any trial.
A sensible explanation of this gaffe (the card was miles away from where they said it was, in Liverpool) by the AFP would go a long way to restoring some faith in them.
An honest mistake would be the best outcome for the AFP.
I can think of other, more disappointing explanations.
Ummmm,
yes, I recognised there was a South Parker lurking there. Enticement? not likely.