The previous Haneef thread is getting long, so let’s summarise today’s news:
- The UK police were the source of the misinformation about the location where Haneef’s old SIM card was found (scratch one of the perceived AFP stuffups, although it still seems odd that during his 12 days being interrogated no-one spotted the error as they were reviewing the British evidence).
- The secret evidence against Haneef that Andrews relied upon for his visa revocation decision was, at least in part, an alleged chatroom conversation with his brother two days after the car-bombing at Glasgow airport, which hardly seems to demonstrate conclusively prior knowledge of the plot.
- The phrases contained in the chatroom conversation as reported by Andrews seem suspicious although also open to innocent explanation (fear not guilt), but certainly do cast doubt on Haneef’s claim that his trip to India had nothing to do with the Glasgow bombing.
So, it was the UK police’s bungling which led to the charges regarding the SIM card collapsing. But what about the rest of the case against Haneef? To my eye Kevin Andrews wants to have his cake and eat it too.
If these chatroom conversations are sufficiently credible evidence of conspiracy to revoke his visa, then why was Haneef allowed to leave the country without conspiracy charges being laid? If these chatroom conversations are not sufficiently credible evidence upon which to lay charges of conspiracy, then why is Haneef’s visa not being reinstated?
Well, given the demonstrable form they have in selective leaking (which prompted Keim to leak the whole interivew) I think Ill wait to see the full text, thanks Kevbot.
Having said that – if this IS the selective leak – the rest must be rather benign.
Anyway, larger points are more worthy of discussion:
a. Why is this government so hot on the politics of national security, and so woefully incompetent on the actual policing and prosecution?
b. Why wasnt this, and any other allegedly relevant evidence adduced at court? WHy was he then let go? Beattie is right. This IS keystone cops.
c. Why would any voter in their right mind want these a drongo like Andrews on the front line? The dude is clearly more interested in wedging the ALP than doing his job.
Bring on a better government.
The evidence released by Andrews is perfectly susceptible of a benign interpretation, and in fact there’s nothing in it but “suspicion” to justify any belief that he did pose a danger to this country’s citizens. It seems that the most obvious interpretation is that he and his family were aware that he could get caught up in a web by virtue of the SIM card, and that he might have found it prudent to leave the country. It doesn’t show that he was associated in a criminal sense with his cousins, just that he was aware of the sort of net that was likely to be cast. Rightly, as it turned out. And it doesn’t exclude a primary reason for his departure being to see his daughter.
The Act specifically denies natural justice, and as pointed out by the Solicitor-General, doesn’t need a criminal association or knowledge of criminality to be made out, just an association.
Haneef it seems is guilty of having relatives.
We don’t need to paint his behaviour either as perfectly rational (the whole thing about whether or not he applied for leave or not implies indecision to me) and nor do we have to suggest he’s some sort of angel from heaven. What we can say on the basis of the information the public now have is that there’s very little basis for the government’s attempt to smear him and destroy his character and livelihood.
I don’t believe that there is an answer from the government and their talking points monkeys yet to this question – why was it necessary for Andrews to cancel his visa when as a condition of bail he would have had to surrender his passport? And he could still be watched by the AFP.
Please enlighten me.
TigTog – your last para. puts the essence -the cherry-picked chatroom conversation, after Glasgow. If it is as water tight as Androids claimed, why let him leave?
Or is it boo-hissing at the departing problem?
He’s gone, he won’t be allowed back if Androids has owt to do with it (he doesn’t of course, being just an arse with ears, given his script by…others).
In the meantime the search goes on for another wedge shaped rabbit for the Rodent.
The evidence Andrews didn’t release was because it could be valuable in ongoing investigations. Does is follow that the nonsense he issued tonight was the trash that was not going to be helpful in ongoing investigations?
tigtog,
What about the situation where the evidence is sufficient to give rise to legitimate concern as to his intentions but not enough to be likely to convict? Personally, if I were a Minister in this situation I would err on the side of caution.
Look at it from the Minister’s point of view – worst possible downside, he lets a terrorist into the country, with the attendant possible horrors. Best possible upside – Queensland gets one more doctor.
Purely from his point of view, he must err on the side of caution and revoke the visa.
I am not saying this is the right, or just, outcome – but to me it is the only logical one.
Anyone who says anything OTHER than this looks VERY suspicious for Haneef, well they got real cognitive problems.
And of course we don’t know the full context, just one piece of info released as a standalone indictment, nice work if you can get it. I would like the hospital where Haneef worked to give us their view as to the timing and conversations. Has anyone asked them?
Andrew, that seems a terribly confused comment as to the timing of events.
But Haneef had to surrender his passport as a condition of bail. He could be watched by the AFP. The only effect of the decision was to deny him bail and keep him incarcerated.
He wasn’t seeking to enter the country, he was here, and he’d been charged with offences. He had no option to leave the country for that reason.
Steve says:
“If that sort of stuff is not put before the court then Andrews should resign on that point alone. ”
You must be a congenital idiot. The Minister doesn’t decide what evidence gets put before the court.
It is important for the minister to indicate whether the words he quoted are a translation from the likely hindi. I find it hard to imagine that the brothers would have spoken via chatroom, in english. In that case, it would be appropriate that he released the original transcript, in native language, for fair perusal.
Just for a start.
That my friend is officially known as wedge politics. Although it is useless rubbish superfluous to our investigations, we will throw it out to the world knowing the RWDB’s will run the story for us and instill fear in anybody genuinely concerned about the state of the world..
Correction my friend, it is called “commonsense”.
andrew’s interference and prejudicial leaks from the AFP and comments by ruddock/howard etc stuffed up this process from the beginning. like hicks, it has nothing to do with haneef’s guilt or innocence.
jack & SATP etc,
what most of us ‘supposed liberal/left’ cleary see, is that executive interference is actually hampering good policing and forensic investigation, and any hope of a normal judicial process. AND even worse it is also potentially creating problems within our local muslim population, who see themselves as being victimised by a system rigged against them.
haneef should have just remained in australia after being bailed, and any case should have been brought to court and tested in that place alone. not in the media by AG/PM, nor prejudiced by the Immigration Minister cancelling his visa. he had already surrendered his passport!!
haneef clearly wasn’t a danger to the country after he had been charged, in fact, the AFP should have welcomed his release, so they could monitor his post-arrest behaviour for any evidence of wrong-doing, as police do with all suspects on bail for serious crimes.
as most LPers have argued – his questioning was entirely legitimate given the circumstances and his family connections to the Glasgow bombings. everything after – has been a major cock-up.
I’ll repeat what I said, satp. The conversation quoted by Andrews proves nothing other than the fact that Haneef knew that he might be caught up in the sort of stuff he did get caught up in because of the connection with his cousins. All the overlay of “suspicion” says something about the cognitive capacity of those who are doing the suspecting. The reason it wasn’t presented to the court is obviously that in terms of legal evidentiary standards, it would have been laughed out of court.
And I’d still like to hear how Andrews’ action made the community “safer” since Haneef had been charged with an offence by this stage and couldn’t leave the country no matter what decision Andrews made.
“Why wasnt this, and any other allegedly relevant evidence adduced at court?”
If this was the killer evidence that Haneef was suss, shouldn’t it have been brought before the magistrate at the bail hearing?
“he lets a terrorist into the country”
He was already in the country, charged with a serious crime and the bail conditions would have kept him on a tight leash.
“evidence not enough to be likely to convict”
Then why was he charged?
One of you said:
“Pretty clearly mark et al have badly over-reached in their criticisms.”
oh geez, one nebulous conversation which indicates nothing much at all – and you are launching the “I told you so” – and at this early stage in Minister Andrew’s secret information striptease? You are wrecking the show and we are not even at the denoument – that bit when the Minister reveals further “evidence” in the coming days/weeks/months. We have yet to hear of certain strange and incongruent “conversations” (no doubt, very soon to become less super secret than they are tonight) between the terrorists and Haneef. Cant you save the “egg on face”, hysterical left wing accusatory hyperbole, you lefties are out of your cottonpickin’ minds, festivus pole shaking outrage, whateveritisyoudo until then Jack and Mel and Satp?
Mark, I stand by what I said. Don’t do too much harm to your reputation by keeping on pushing the line you have been.
This is not about evidence, or beyond reasonable doubt or anything like it.
It may turn out to be nothing, but so far it sure does not look good for Haneef. From the information which is currently to hand, Haneef has some explaining to do.
Tigtog, and others here: in your arguments that “well, if the secret evidence was that bad, why did the Minister let him go?” you are continually ignoring the issue of the wildly different tests as to what evidence you need to run a criminal case, and what evidence a Minister can use to decide to revoke a visa.
And for those who think this conversation is not conclusive: remember that this does not comprise the whole of the evidence the Minister relied on.
However, given the nature of the charge the police laid, isn’t it safe to assume that the evidence, including the secret evidence yet to be revealed, was still not going to be enough to found a criminal charge?
However, I don’t see that Australia has an obligation to keep a non-citizen here in circumstances where the government has sufficient evidence to have reasonable suspicions about his connection to terrorists, yet not enough to charge with a criminal offence.
We don’t have to keep such people waiting to see if they will commit an offence or not, surely. Yet that seems to be exactly the position Mark and others are arguing for.
If further investigations reveal an actual offence, then doesn’t England and Australia have extradition agreements with India?
And by the way, the shrillness of some of Mark’s comments in the previous thread which moved here indicate to me that he can see that he may be on what looks like the losing side of the public debate over the validity of the revocation decision.
Define “shrill”, Steve. I suspect it’s in the eye of the beholder.
Mark on 31 July 2007 at 9:01 pm
It takes some chutzpah to convert the hysteria whipped up by Howard-hostile commenters over alleged violations of Haneefs civil rights into a “partisan wedge” by the govt.
I dont care a fig about the political implications for the LN/P. I just think that the Wets have whipped themselves up into a lather of moral indignation over this issue and come acropper, as usual. There is no need to create “wedges” when Wets create a rod for their own back.
marks says:
Oh maek, dont play the civil rights violin so mournfully, my eyes are misting up with tears. A visa ia not a natural right, therefore revoking it is not a violation of natural justice. Haneef cannot lose a right that he does not have in the first place. All this cant about rights is just nonsense on stilts, as Bentham would say.
Haneef’s connections were suspicious, his communications were suspicioua and his actions were suspicious. Plenty of room for malign interpretations there. Mark has ducked all these key points, particularly the one about hasty flight.
I am satisfied that the minister did not abuse his powers in revoking the visa. It sends a message to those who consort with trouble makers: be on your best behaviour or else. Haneef can get it back when the ALP win office,
All this stuff about his reputation being trashed and livelihood ruined is balderdash. He will probably return to AUS and receive a heroes welcome. He has already been canonised as a secular saint.
mark says:
No, you are wrong. We are citing AFP records. Or are they just govt stooges too?
Politically, this is ‘amateur hour’. Anyone who throws this ‘spin’ into the ring and is not available for a serious interview has about as much credibility as SATP.
We have not seen any transcript. All we have is Andrews’ selective version of what happened. Please.
But if Andrews believes that Haneef is, or was supporting terrorists, then why did he allow Haneef to leave?
Maybe somewhere down the track, Andrews might be charged with recklessly supporting a terrorist organisation. After all he did allow him to leave. And he paid for his ticket.
But I am not sure about whether he gave him a SIM card.
WPD, don’t make too big a fool of yourself.
My credibility has never been in doubt, not in my lifetime.
The problem with dealing with those here who are supporting the attacks on Andrews and the Government is that they are dishonest. You know the truth but your stupid pride won’t admit it.
It wouldn’t matter what information was presented to Andrews it would spoil your fun and your idiotic intrigues to have the graciousness to admit you were wrong. Totally wrong.
Of course the information was not conclusive – indeed it does seem to have turned out to be wrong. But at the time it was reasonable to hold suspicions and to check them out.
The UK police were the source of the misinformation so all the crap about political intrigues, wedge politics and so on goes out the window. It probably was a mistake but one with very limited costs.
As was clear from the start Andrews had the responsibility under the Migration Act to cancel Haneef’s visa. He took appropriate action and the explanation he gave Kevin Rudd was appropriately accepted by him.
What always gets me is the view of human nature you guys take. It must reflect your own values. You must assume other people act and think as you do. Not just Liberal politicians but Kevin Rudd, Mick Kelty the lot.
Don’t worry about it Mark & Co I am sure that next week you can come up with a new hysterical fantasy. But you only bring discredit upon yourselves with this appalling behaviour.
Andrews cites this chat-room conversation as evidence supporting a suspicion that Haneef had prior knowledge of the Glasgow attack, then quite deliberately quotes an excerpt from the conversation that provides evidence of the opposite. His brother says to him that these cousins seem to have had something to do with the Glasgow affair. This shows that at least the brother didn’t think Haneef had any prior knowledge of the affair. He’s telling Haneef something he thinks he might not know.
I’m trying to work out how anything so far released could possibly raise suspicion of prior knowledge. Maybe he has other top-secret info? Or maybe Andrews is too dumb to make reasonable decisions on the basis of evidence before him. I think he should resign and take up some occupation that requires less headwork.
Only in your own mind SATP.
Peter Russo, Haneef’s lawyer, has justed suggested on SBS that this information released by Andrews is not part of the secret brief of evidence by which the Minister made his decision but has been around and was available for weeks. He’s recycling. He also asserts that the Minister should have released the entire transcript of the interview where Haneef provides explanations, so that the public can make up their own mind.
I’d stick to thinking about organisms, Harry. You claim that others have no credibility but you’re the one suspending any judgement on this matter and putting your entire faith and trust in whatever the government says.
Yep.
This is the critical issue.
Even SATP, Strocchi and their fellow claqueurs of executive tyranny acknowledge that the information released by Andrews had nothing to do with intelligence gathering.
This material was in the possession of the Crown Solicitor. It could have been submitted to the magistrate in support of a denial of bail to Haneef. Yet it is a notorious fact that the Crown did no such thing. Here is proof positive of what qualified legal practitioners think about the threadbare rationalisations cobbled together by Kevin Andrews.
And do SATP, Jack Strocchi and other claqueurs of executive tyranny think that all of this is “suspicious”?
Of course they do! That’s how persons with unhealthy fixations always think.
OK Mark:
That’s “shrill”. Oh, and the phrase “the government and its talking points monkeys” is pure ad hominem.
“why was Haneef allowed to leave the country without conspiracy charges being laid?” – because the criminal justice system, in particular the rules of evidence and the requirement to prove beyond a reasonable doubt are inadequate tools for prosecuting terrorist suspects.
The Minister has made the correct decision.
I’d like to hear if Kruddie disagrees.
I doubt it.
Well, the larger point is made well by Bartlett. We either live in a society governed by rule of law (which incidentally, still allows suspects to be surveilled 24/7, followed, charged, prosecuted etc) – or we live in one where fates are determined on judicially unreviewable, unaccountable executive order.
Now, Haneef may attract little sympathy. Whatevs. The point is that what Andrews is lawfully entitled to do under our Migration Act(administratively detain a person without charge, without putting them before a court, for an indefinite period, without even having to even explain why) is precisely what defines regimes like Mugabe, Hussein, and other tinpot authoritarian creeps.
That he can do it after a court grants bail merely highlights the potential for abuse of executive power.
Now – we limit that abuse of power to non-citizens, yes, and they dont. Granted. Thats a key difference.
But for how long? And how long to other governments start doing it to us, on tourist, or working visas?
Anyway – we knew all this. Migration Act needs reform by next government.
I should add – I have far less problem with Andrew’s actual decision to revokie his visa than I do about his power to keep someone like Haneef in a detention centre, forever, without charge.
Steve, I was merely having a go at Mr Strocchi. I’m sure he doesn’t take it to heart. Perhaps “talking points monkeys” is harsh, and I withdraw it. But there are some here who are slavishly defending the government talking point by talking point. Casey makes the point that Russo suggested that the Minister should release Haneef’s response to these allegations based on the chatroom conversation. That seems eminently fair. But very few of those defending Andrews’ opinion seem to have taken any cognisance whatever of the fact that there is a more obvious interpretation of the conversation than the terrorist one, and of the fact that his own response may be relevant. But that would be to accord him natural justice, which we’ve been told is not on in these circumstances.
If I was the police prosecutor, that chatroom conversation would have satisfied me that Haneef was a “flight risk” and I would have opposed bail vigorously.
Probably in vain, as the magistrate who made the decision doesn’t always make decisions which reflect favourbably upon the office she holds.
Assuming this latest development is the real mccoy, I am not comfortable that Haneef was allowed to leave the country, & thus put himself beyond the reach of investigators.
But, there is no such thing.
So why has Andrews indulged in another selective information leak? Clearly, he has been under a lot of pressure. Given the precedent of numerous Govt sanctioned (e.g. AFP) leaks to date, another one wouldn’t bother them.
Maybe the heat got too much before they could spring the wedge trap on Rudd, who had deftly avoided it anyway? Is this more to this game to come? Looks like it to me.
Other posts have remarked on how strange it is that this “new evidence” was not part of the original charge. I wonder about this too.
Andrews had enough “evidence” to deport someone suspected of supporting (or talking to) terrorists, yet he lets him loose on his last night then lets him leave the country. So much for our tough new laws. This will be a perennial problem with Executive taking on the role of judiciary (judge, jury and commentator).
At least there seems to be now at one check used, albiet optional – with the solicitor-general.
Still more questions than answers.
This is a very shabby performance from the government – next time we may suffer from the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome. They should stick to what they are good at – looking after the coal industry and squeezing first home buyers out of the market.
I might also add that the Russo seemed quite aggrieved that the Fed Police have not provided Haneef’s defence team with the transcript of that interview either, so that Haneef’s defence was also unable to provide accurate details of that interview.
But SATP, this evidence was never forwarded in court. The magistrate that you seem to have some kind of set against was never given an opportunity to show how incompetent you allege her to be.
Was was the result of incompetence on the part of the Crown?
OR
Do you think that this was some kind of conspiracy of silence by the Crown Prosecutors?
Choose one. There are no other explanations.
SATP, can you point me to a transcript of that conversation? Or are you relying on a particular and peculiar precis as given by Minister Andrews?
BTW, I am now well past by bedtime, but I have to see whether Andrews will front Lateline.
The snippet released by Andrews may indicate something sinister or perhaps it’s simply a discussion of how to avoid some expected media attention. The only thing I get is that he didn’t seem to realise he was being watched.
Really? For me I am further convinced by this release that Haneef did not have prior knowledge of the act. From the release:
There is absolutely no reason why his brother would be telling the circumstances of the event if Haneef already knew all about it.
Seems the police have only information after the event. Exactly what you would expect in this situation. If your second cousin had tried to blow up an airport you can bet all the relo’s from all over the world would be calling each other to figure out what was happening and hand out advice.
Show the prior knowledge and then you have a case.
The erstwhile ‘defenders of our freedoms’ are yet again prepared to surrender our freedoms at the first hint of a terrorist.
Fight terrorism – hoist the white flag!
There would seem to be little chance of Haneef having is visa restored.
JohnF, it should be kept in mind that Haneef & his clan are highly educated & world travelled.
Unlikely if guilty, that they would, either in open chat or on an open phone line, actually use phrases such as “Allah be praised, our cousins have struck a blow against the infidel English/Scottish unbelievers!”
If the two brothers used SMS type shorthand in either Hindi or Urdu in their chat room conversation then any attempts to translate as to the true intent of the interaction between the brothers would be fraught with difficulty in regard to accuracy of translation and would therefore be meaningless as far as reliability of intent IMHO.
â??(Mr Andrews) has led the Australian public to believe that this is the secret information. It is hardly secret information if it was put to my client in the second record of interview,â?? Mr Russo told Southern Cross Broadcasting from India.
â??And therefore, the Director of Public Prosecutions would have had access to that when they were making their judgment call (to drop the case). “
SATP, the absence of evidence is evidence? That’s a bit Rumsfeldian isn’t it?
“Haneef & his clan are highly educated & world travelled.”
Would highly educated terrorists leave evidence of incriminating chat room chat on their hard drive that the rozzers could seize at any moment?
The worst possible construction of all this is that Haneef’s brother said to the doctor something to the effect, “that idiot cousin of ours you gave your SIM card to might really have landed you in it. You better get back here toute suite”.
Which just goes to show that you can choose your friends but not your relatives.
But it doesn’t show that Haneef is a terrorist, a fellow traveller of terrorists or a consorter with terrorists.
Surely it’s obvious that the reason the evidence wasn’t produced in court is that the full context deprives it of probative value.
The DPP, as Katz has pointed out, had all this stuff. Presumably the AFP, since it produced it for Andrews, was keenly pointing to it in its dealings with the DPP. The trouble is that if it were to be produced in court, then the defence would also have to be given access to it, since that’s how the legal system works – even, to the disappointment of Howard and his henchmen, in terrrism cases. (BTW in my view the charge they did proceed with probably would have stuck legally, since the terrrism laws are so widely drafted and vague that a non-criminal association may well have constituted the planks of the offence. Sadly for the government, this was never tested because the case had collapsed politically – the Australian public, or more precisely even the Liberal heartland, wasn’t ready to accept that an innocent association could render a person liable for criminal penalties.)
At any event, if the evidence had been produced in the bail hearing, the defence would have been granted access to it and time to look at it in context, then make submissions on it. The DPP would not produce evidence that the defence could explode – lawyers and public servants fear above all else being made fools of in public. Of course, the evidence they did in fact produce turned out to have been fitted with a self-destructing device, but the DPP would have relied on the AFP to have got the basic facts right – the DPP doesn’t gather the evidence, they just assess it and produce it in court bearing in mind that the defence is entitled to receive exculpatory evidence that they possess. So, what gets produced in court by the prosecution is the hard facts that the defence has no obvious answer to – if this material produced by Andrews had any probative value in terms of casting Haneef’s bail application in a bad light, it would undoubtedly have been produced. The fact it wasn’t tells us all we need to know about its value.
Of course, the immigration system doesn’t work that way, and Andrews would neither need nor want to know anything about exculpatory context, and the person the subject of adverse orders has no natural (or indeed any other sort of) justice rights to know what is being held against them. Indeed, as the charade of producing the Solicitor General’s opinion shows and as Quiggin inter alia has pointed out, indefinite immigration detention is a completely arbitrary power of the sort that would have been familiar to habitues of the Court of Star Chamber.
Given that they are highly educated if they were guilty and knew of the events they would not be discussing how to handle it after it happened.
The whole panic like behaviour from Haneef and family was a mistaken belief that his SIM was involved in the bombing.
There is definitely confusion in here between the standard of evidence required to guarantee a conviction in a court of law, and the grounds for revoking a visa.
If this is deliberate it is likely a face saving exercise by some who would sink the country rather than admit having backed the wrong horse, or it is obtuseness as a discussion ploy.
If this confusion is real, then a few people are very much out of their depth.
I can only agree.
Or else what’s being argued is the contention that such a double standard is exactly the core of the broad unease with Andrews’ actions.
[b]The most interesting thing is, is if this was any other government except the Howard government we would not have too many issues with what has happened. However watching this being played out as a vote buying exercise and, our previous experience with government lies and tricky deeds [Tampa, Hicks, Baby Overboard, AWB bribes etc] we are left in considerable doubt about anything the govt says or does on this. This in itself is a condemnation on the integrity of the Howard govt.[/b]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22163726-601,00.html
Andrews releases part of the ‘secret’ information that the AFP says he is allowed to, and suggests that it implies;
1. that Haneef’s reason for leaving was not the birth of his child but because of the trouble in the UK
2. that it implies the possibility of foreknowledge of the UK events.
Now the problem we have here is that the purpose of this information was to exonerate Andrews decision thus it must be viewed critically since we know that the government has a habit of lying to the public and giving misinformation, most especially at election times.
This could just as well be a manipulated Chat Room message to create the sense of suspicsion or it could be genuine – there is no way we can really know without an independent examination of the data.
[b]1.[/b] The most obvious strangeness of the Chat Room conversation is the concern expressed about the leave thus:
“have you got permission to leave work?” and “tell them you have a newborn daughter”. Now if you were immediately fleeing the country why on earth would you worry about such things? Simply leave when you have your ticket. Call in sick. Why bother to make up a story – it seems quite odd. So why is this seemingly irrelevant information part of a ‘flee’ the country story? SO was this an insertion into the email because it reflected what Haneef had done, put in a leave application?
“He did not apply for leave from the hospital when he went to work at the hospital on the Monday morning and it was not until after he received two telephone calls – one from India – having been told in both calls that there was an issue about his SIM card, that he applied for leave that afternoon from the hospital,”
[b]2.[/b] Now we know Haneef apparently tried to phone the police in the UK twice because he had been told that his old SIM card was an issue there, being found in Liverpool with his cousin.
[b]3.[/b] “The brother added that ‘auntie’ told him that brother Kafeel used it, he’s in some sort of project over there,” “Mr Andrews said, in a reference to UK bombing accused Kafeel Ahmed.” This implies that they did NOT have prior knowledge of anything ie ‘some sort of project’. Their real concern was that Kafeel had done something wrong and had in the past used the SIM card. Thus the concern of this conversation is a bad person using your card would reflect on you and implicate you. Quite understandable.
So it appears we can make an innocent scenario out of this along the lines Haneef has given in evidence:
a) A cousin recieves a SMS from his cousin telling him to check his email. At some stage he checks his email and finds it to be a Will.
i) at the same time of checking the email or after? – there is the attempted bombing in the UK
ii) the police check on relatives of the bombers and find a cousin in Liverpool
iii) they find the SIM card held by the cousin and find it to be Haneef’s
iv) the police charge the cousin on with-holding information – saying he should have realised the
SMS/e-mail meant his cousin was going to do some terrorist event.
iv) the cousin rings his family in India to tell the family about what the cousins had done and about the SIM
card. He or someone else also rings Haneef telling him that the police are charging him but found his SIM
card. And no doubt suggesting he should come home.
v) the family in India rings Haneef concerned as well with regard the cousins activity and also about the SIM
card. No doubt telling him he better come home.
vi) he has a Chat room conversation about leaving for India.
vii) he boards a plane and gets arrested
viii) he is released on bail
ix) his visa is cancelled
I suggest this is fairly close to the chain of events.
There are some things I dont understand
1. Why worry about the reason for leave if your fleeing the country – it doesnt make sense
2. The cousin in the UK was let out on bail, not charged with connection to the plot – his actions were hardly
suspicious. If he had known about the plot he would not have needed the SMS about the Will? And what does it
mean anyway?
3. The UK police were/are not interested in Haneef and barely mentioned him in the UK interrogations, but if
that email was genuine wouldn’t they be interested him based on the full email?
4. If that email is entirely accurate in its entirity why wasnt it presented as evidence? Why wasnt it released
earlier.
5. There is nothing secret about this email atg all, no reason to keep it secret at all. Why the hoo-haa about
releasing it?
FINALLY:
“And secondly, the AFP consider Dr Haneef’s attempted urgent departure from Australia on a one-way ticket for a purpose which appears to be a false pretext to be highly suspicious and may reflect Haneef’s awareness of the conspiracy to plan and prepare the acts of terrorism in London and Glasgow.”
Now I agree that it does appear suspicious and that the AFP rightly held Haneef in custody while they investigated. But it certainly does not infer prior knowledge of the UK plots at all and the UK police didn’t say that of the cousin they released on bail – so how could it be inferred here?
The plausible and logical reason for actions of Haneef can be thus:
Mr Haneef’s 2nd cousins make an attempt at bombing. All hell breaks loose. Haneefs cousing in Liverpool is questioned and they find Haneefs old SIM card there. They take an interest in the SIM card. Family ring India and also Haneef telling him what the cousins had done and that his SIM card is being mentioned and in fact Kafeel had used the phone in the past – So he better return to India quickly since he will be implicated. Haneef trys to ring the police in the UK twice about the SIM card. Haneef’s family in India ring Haneef and tell him to come home quick because of the SIM card and being a relative – because it doesnt look good.
You are related to someone who has just attempted a bomb attack and also your old SIM card is with one of the relatives and, they had arrested briefly and released on bail, your other cousin. You get 2 phone calls telling you about the SIM cards implication and no doubt to come home quick. You talk on Chat – and confirm you leaving today. [no need to talk about excuses for leave]. When the police arrest you – of course you make an excuse like the one given – your not going to say ‘I am running away because my cousins bombed somthing in the UK’.
Now if the email is entirely accurate the conversation showing that getting leave was a concern is hardly the action of someone fleeing. Rather it implies taking leave because you intend to come back, when the trouble blows over. You would not consider doing this if you had any connection with the events.
So this secret evidence doesn’t quite implicate Haneef the way stated and, the email seems a bit odd in its content. Is this the whole of the email, has it been sexied up, are their other emails that give a better context, is the email mostly invention. Unfortunately knowing the government as we do any of the above is possible. We hope for more leaking and more forensic examination and discussions by media, experts and legal teams before we can draw any conclusions. [b]It was hardly secret information though which thus gives me some grave doubts.[/b]
So it will be interesting to see further inforamtion and forensic examination and discussion.
There is a big lesson in this – Government should not be involved in the process at all because it undermines the security services; the Government in making this a political election vote buying affair has turned it into a dogs breakfast- the governments role messing this up [the running press releases , politicing etc ] should be reviewed.
The government should be taken to task for messing this up and making a mokery of the laws.
Andrews was just on Lateline.
His closing statement was something like: “The subsequent information, some of which I released today, it wasn’t information I relied on, only served to confirm my suspicions”.
I find this quite telling. It’s very similar to Andrews claim that Haneef’s “sudden departure” after Andrews handed him his passport and a plane ticket “only heightens my suspicions”.
Another thing Andrews found suspicious was Haneef’s decision to start holding press conferences in India, but not hold any in Australia. This is quite ridiculous. It was my understanding that Andrew’s department was doing its best to prevent contact between Haneef and the press, not just in Australia, but also even on the plane to India, by upgrading Haneef at the last minute and moving all of the journalists to the upper deck of the plane, well away from Haneef.
My best guess is that there never was any “secret information”. Andrews is doing his best to manufacture justifications after the fact. The more he does it, though, the sillier he looks.
It is hard to square the evidence so far that the Haneef’s perhaps are not be the type of family we want here, with the huge resources in investigating apparently very little. This doesn’t inspire confidence in me that we could efficiently and fairly manage the investigation of a real conspiracy.
Sorry my last post didnt format the way had typed it. :[
This event is actually sucking airspace and print space from Howard’s lot.
The reason why they do not want Haneef back and the real problem for the government is that the legal profession is either unwilling or incapable of carrying out the letter and intent of the anti-terrorism laws.
Incapable: e.g. the stuff-ups made by the DPP
Unwilling: e.g. the Brisbane Magistrate who over-rode the law’s presumption of denying bail for Haneef that forced the Minister to get directly involved in the first place.
Compare this one case to Britain where the legal profession is much more onside and where over 1200 such detentions have been made, with only 3% ever having enough evidence to be upheld in court.
Well, it’s open to various interpretations what Andrews’ selective release of this conversation means. SATP and others can draw their own inferences, albeit even on this release it seems pretty clear that Haneef had no prior knowledge of the events, as several posters have mentioned.
Even if we take it at face value: that his brother advised him to get out quick, it may have been just to avoid the frenzy in the media and the government which was to follow. And pretty good advice it was, if only he’d gotten away before the plods started closing in.
At the height of McCarthyism in the US and the infamous Rosenberg “Atom Spies” trial and conviction, a close friend of theirs, Morton Sobels, became very nervous. In addition to friendship he’d also been a communist activist with them, albeit never anything to do with espionage. He headed for Mexico in a panic, was chased after by the FBI just because of this ‘suspicious behaviour’ and was eventually handed over to them by the Mexican secret police amid much media fanfare. He was brought into the trial, mostly because the case against the Rosenbergs was so flimsy and tainted, and the only evidence against him was perjured testimony by a work colleague. At least he wasn’t executed, but he still copped about 30 years, released after about 20.
At worst, Haneef’s behaviour is little different from Sobels: an attempt to escape the hysteria.
The real issue with Andrews, of course, is that the visa revocation, after perfectly safe bail arrangements had been made, was a contempt of court – interference with the judiciary if you like – and the big (but failed) play to turn it into a political football.
Listening to Andrews I think they will end up calling at a draw.
Good analysis Nhullunbuy. Just one question, did Sabeel the cousin in Liverpool get bail? I though he was detained.
I cannot understand how people who claim that they ‘take international terrorism seriously’ are supporting a Ministerial decision to stop watching a possible suspect and send them to India. If he was here, we could watch his every move, listen to every conversation and read every bit of correspondence he sends or receives. We might learn useful things about his associates and their activities and if we’re really, really lucky we might even help stop something bad from happening in the future, here or elsewhere in the world. This would be an unambiguously good thing that would help make the world a safer place and keep Australia the safe place it is.
Instead, we send him to India, outside the reach of the Austrlaian authorities. We don’t want him, he’s not our problem, we just want him to go somewhere else, anywhere else. We don’t care what he does, as long as he doesn’t do it here.
How does expelling Haneef add *anything* to the safety of Australia or the world? What is the upside to his expulsion, from a law enforcement or counter-terrorism perspective. How is this ‘taking terrorism seriously’?
I just don’t get it. I mean, I usually understand the ideology or motivation that informs various ‘right-wing’ views I disagree with, but I find this incomprehensible. If anyone can be bothered to explain to a tired old hack where the security upside is, I’d appreciate it. (I obviously can’t promise to agree with it, but I’ll appreciate it none the less :^)
d
From memory at the time of these events I believe he was released on bail. I dont know subsequently.
Tigtog: I think I pointed out on an earlier thread here that there is nothing unusual about different legal standards leading to contrary decisions on the same facts: a rape victim may get criminal injuries compensation (decided on a balance of probabilities standard) even though the accused was acquitted of the criminal charge (decided on “beyond reasonable doubt”.)
People here are also making a lot of assumptions, without any firm knowledge, as to what was put to the magistrate on the bail hearing, who decided what to put to her, and whether they had legitimate reason to not put certain stuff before her (or not in full detail.) It would be 100% certain, however, that it would not have been Andrews in that decision making loop.
It seems that Andrews had more detail than the Magistrate, for reasons nothing to do with him, and he was also making a decision based on different legislation. It should not be entirely surprising that the Magistrate and Andrews could come to different conclusions.
Now to speculate: perhaps Andrews could have avoided the “overriding the Magistrate” criticism if he had made his decision prior to the Magistrate’s, but only announced it after (and could prove he had made it beforehand). He could not have made the decision and announced it prior to the bail hearing, as he would have been accused of seeking to prejudice that outcome.
“If these chatroom conversations are sufficiently credible evidence of conspiracy to revoke his visa, then why was Haneef allowed to leave the country without conspiracy charges being laid?”
This is the mother of all stupid comments. To revoke a visa requires “reasonable suspicion”. To charge someone with a criminal offence the prosecutor must be satisfied that a court is likely to find the accused “guilty beyond all reasonable doubt”.
Let me put these things together:
“reasonable suspicion”
“guilty beyond all reasonable doubt”
Even the most obtuse and hysterical boutique leftist should be able to spot the difference.
If I remember, it was not the AFP preference to charge Haneef. They were still applying to extend his ‘detention’ after about 14 days. This doesn’t suggest to me that all this detention was just with a view to revoking a visa. Sounds like an extended fishing expedition that didn’t land anything and the visa revokation was a hasty fallback position.
This whole conversation is so stupid. This is just another example of the government lying its sagging tits off. Anyone remember children overboard? It’s a classic lie: swear till you’re blue in the face that you have incontrovertible evidence of a crime, and then release a pathetic tidbit of evidence.
Anyone who even considers believing the government when they release partial evidence like this is a fool. Everyone knows by now that you don’t have a conversation like this about this government until years later, when the evidence has finally been dug up and shown incontrovertibly that the whole lot of them are a bunch of lying weasels.
Daryl, I also made this point on an earlier thread, but it is time to repeat it. Hypothetically:
1. if Dr Haneef had been (say) in the USA and left there in a hurry after the Glasgow bombing,
2. the circumstances of his departure had been exactly the same, and he had the same conversations with his relatives that are disclosed,
3. our immigration minister was now deciding whether to let him come here for the first time on a work visa, and had been provided with evidence of the conversations from American authorities
would you think the Minister should grant the visa or not? You may think he should; but I am betting that many Australians would hold the reasonable view that he should not.
Mr Rosin – given the gnashing of teeth over the detention of illegal combatants at Gitmo (scratch one ex-guest this week!) I can understand the Government’s hesitation to hold a potential bit player. Perhaps they also think the Indians might be better off looking after their own Nationals.
And Harry showed up here to stick out his chin against the deranged.Why seeing the N.S.W.Police are collecting a list of regretables that go violent as previous described and proscribed by the Mental Health related Acts…dont worry Mark…I am ready for my violent behaviour. Now if they stop all medication, until it is absolutely proven to have no side effects whatsoever in all conditions of life that a described person could face,then Harry facing me via this activity isnt safe, until the process by the NHMRC fully concurs the latest medications, and, the accumulative effects of previous ones assessed drugs given to mental patients.. as safe !? After all why should the Police be blamed ,if I put up resistance here ,call him another one of these….. overpaid one-dimensional half-wits complying to their need to believe in themselves, rather than, any objective evidence of themselves… as observed in printed argument and the implicit set of pre-conditional values.. they seem to think are both worthy,and,by virtue of their worthiness.. bear down on those who would disagree with such…..and by virtue of the fact they arrest me,because I was insensitive to the normal Harry, as, I got shrill beyond the potential of Harry to understand me. Why would the Police be blamed !? Because I sounded friendly to Mark and the rules of the Blog,and only the Police ,because Psychiatrist cant… can pick someone on edge. Seeing the NHMRC are a bludging lot having a conversation with themselves,as they pretend to classify knowledge of safety before drugs are used,and ,somehow over time no longer prescribed for the proscribed, and are replaced as drugs,then, it is plainly obvious I am a danger to Harry….. because I cannot accept the nong has any idea of what deranged means to use the word in the offensive way that he did. Seeing he also isnt qualified to insist on that by using said words…that then means, to me, someone who has been taken away by Police three times to a mental authority place of practice………………………… Bear with me Mark…….Harry explain yourself! Harry!?….Harry could you please explain once and for all time why it is any argument against the present decisions of Andrews along with those people who opposed us being in Iraq should all voluntarily give up their work,their lives and ask immediately to be placed in a mental institution or be watched closely by Mental Health Authorities or those deemed to do the work under all Acts of government related to Mental Health.!?HARRY…!? Ummmm just kidding witching hour.
(pdf file)
One further thing I don’t understand is, if Haneef is so suspicious, why the Indian government appears to be so blase about him.
Good point Don.
Imagine if Haneef had got back to India before the AFP swooped. Does anyone seriously think the Australian government would have pursued the matter any further, let alone applied for his extradition? The whole idea of charging him here for an offence committed in the UK, when the UK authorities appear totally uninterested, was transparently self-serving from the very start, right down to Ruddock’s stalwart refusal to extradite him to the UK (ummm Phil it’s manners to wait until you’re asked). The real purpose of the exercise has been apparent ever since with the relentless barrage of government leaks and comments designed to keep the story on the front page.
They should have detained him without fuss until the Brits said they didn’t want him, then cancelled his visa if they felt they had to and sent him home – again without trumpeting it all over the media. Sadly, the signs are that they’ve achieved their grubby objective and will be given credit by the credulous for keeping the terrurists at bay.
Unbelievable.
They order him not to speak to the media, and Andrews interprets his compliance as evidence of having “something to hide”.
If he keeps this up they’ll have to promote Uncle Joe again.
I move that we should only sell uranium to India if they sign the SIM Card Non-proliferation Treaty.
Ken Parish at Troppo says that Andrew’s critics should do the explaining:
But I must say, in light of the just-released information about Dr Haneefâ??s chatroom conversation with his brother the day before he tried to leave Australia and was arrested, that a lot of people owe Andrews an apology. AFP errors in relation to where Haneefâ??s SIM card was found; whether he flatted with cousins in the UK; and whether he had given an explanation for his attempted departure from Australia; certainly together justified the dropping of charges against him (as did the more central factor of whether it could be proved that he knew about the terrorist propensities of his relations when he handed over the SIM card). But the contents of the chatroom conversation (if true) are suspicious as all hell, and in themselves justify both the refusal to reinstate his visa and keeping him under the closest surveillance………
The immediate political consequences of these revelations are unclear. Rudd has backed the Howard governmentâ??s actions to date, and still hasnâ??t backed away from that stance, despite having backtracked to an extent yesterday. Presumably he was briefed on the protected information some of which has now been revealed. That makes his refusal to criticise the government easier to comprehend in principled terms rather than just as â??wedge avoidanceâ??. Nevertheless, these revelations may reinforce for the average punter the fact that Islamic terrorism is a real threat for Australia, contrary to the glib assumptions of many on the left. That could conceivably reinforce an already detectable poll trend back to the Coalition.
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2007/07/31/a-real-turd-but/
Sadly for Team Rodent, they also reinforce that this government isnt much chop at dealing with them.
Again – the inescapable point: if these latest revelations mean anything, why let him go?
So this is the secret mens business that couldn’t get put before the court? I wonder it we ever get the full conversation released by someone so it can be put on context?
I think now it must be obvious to anyone why Rudd did thy right thing avoiding the wedge; the Howard Government really are a bunch of sneaky clowns.
Steve in Brisbane – I got no opinion on that hypothetical and with respect I don’t see what it has to do with the question I asked.
Razor – I’m not suggesting he should have been held. He should have been ‘tagged and released’, to borrow a metaphor. And really, the Indian’s already have their hands full with mad religious violence, domestically, and in neighbouring countries. Haneef was (at worst) a small fish we could have managed.
d
Yes, and I predict the Andrews spin on the chat room convo doesnt last 24 hours before getting shot to pieces like the rest of his incompetent, bumbling efforts of late.
Everyone:
There was a hilarious interview on ABC Radio National “A,M,” on Tuesday morning during which the reporter and an ex-Scotland Yard gentleman set up a shaky heirachy of information with Legal Evidence being regarded as most valuable and so placed at the top and Security Intelligence being far less valuable and so set way down below it …. with that sort of muddled thinking on the loose is it any wonder the stuff-ups happened? Thank goodness Scientific Proof wasn’t added to the mix or they would have been well-and-truly bewildered.
Interesting too that they were able to monitor and record the chat room conversation (assuming Andrews recent statements are not all bullshit). They must have had a full surveillance operation in progress, probably at the ISP too. I guess they would have had time to ramp this up though.
Steve
It’s not a straight comparison as a premise. Compare the difference between not hiring somebody and sacking them. Or if that, post workchoices, doesn’t seem distinct enough, the difference between not renting a house to someone and evicting them.
So this
is a very wide point to make.
I’ll leave it to the others about the merits of “connections to terrorists” but should make the point that about being on a work visa. You work, you contribute to the community, you pay taxes, live somewhere and you have professional and social networks. What I don’t accept is that these people can be booted out on a bureaucratic suspicion and a bunch of folks with a funny feeling in their tummies. A wrong is committed and it should be accountable. This is my concern at least. If other people want to go on about how much of a privilege it is to be here, good luck to them.
Sorry, Steve in Brisbane obviously.
and sorry, just watching Lateline:
bureaucratic suspicion“darned well convinced”Regardless of whether you think Haneef is innocent or guilty or simply has a touch of suspicion about him, the fact is that the government and the AFP turned what should have been a very simple and straightforward case into a complete farce, and the reason for this comes down to the government being too eager to score some political points. The case was dragged through the media, with leaks happening left, right, and centre, and finally, charges dropped due to simple evidence being misreported and mishandled.
The question for those who support Howard (who have obviously fallen into his little trap) is whether you can really trust him in the future when it comes to dealing with REAL terrorist threats and incidents. If Howard is continually falling over himself to politicise these situations for electoral advantage, then how can you really be sure that future cases won’t collapse or suffer major stuff-ups (like this one) that then lead to real terrorists being set free?
If you just take a little peak behind the thinly veiled spin coming from Howard and his friends, you cannot escape the fact that this whole situation was BADLY handled right from the start. It does not exactly inspire much confidence in this government’s ability to manage future terrorist threats.
This sorry saga is a black mark against Howard’s national security credentials.
Precisely.
Steve at the Pub says:
“If I was the police prosecutor, that chatroom conversation would have satisfied me that Haneef was a â??flight riskâ?? and I would have opposed bail vigorously.
Probably in vain, as the magistrate who made the decision doesnâ??t always make decisions which reflect favourbably upon the office she holds.”
Hmmm. Sounds to me like when Steve is not at the pub he wears a uniform and perhaps makes the odd appearance, you know where.
Also sounds like he’s copped a slap or two from Her Honour in times past.
C’mon Steve, no point in holding a grudge just because you’ve lost a case or two. Can’t win ‘em all, you know.
As for Andrews, I suspect he’s still “selectively quoting” from the Internet transcript, just as he previously did from Haneef’s ROI.
Maybe Keim will be kind enough to leak a copy so we can all geta dekko at the unvarnished article, rather than taking Numb Nuts’ word for what’s it says.
A prior director of Scotland yard was interviewed for his opinion on the Haneef evidence. While suggesting that the English evidence was probably the cause of the confusion he did say that the Australian police should have been more cautious before acting and in particular he said that they “should get the evidence in writing”. This suggests that the information passed and acted on might have been in sketch or conversational form. If so this leaves the issue wide open for misinterpretation.
Sounds to me more like they got that stuff off the hard-drive of his lap-top. (Gummo’s Razor – when looking for explanations of silly Government behaviour, always select the explanation which assumes the lowest level of competence).
Interesting observation over here.
The suggestion is that the Gov does these leaks at around 5:30pm so the news organisations don’t have time to research prior to airing on the evening News.
Whilst I realise SATP, et.al will consider this wildly conspiratorial, it is something to keep a watchful eye out for to test it’s veracity.
Today could be coincidence or a confirmation of the hypothesis. Andrew’s holds his news conference, it’s on all the evening news. A few hours later, what a surprise! Russo says this information has been known for two weeks and was considered by the court when they decided to release him – i.e. it didn’t prove anything.
Aside: Could we arrest Peter Reith for recklessly giving his SIM card to his son?
Why Andrews is delivering us selective bullshit.
[link]
Let us have the whole story, minister
[b]COMMENT[/b]
TONY WRIGHT
Continued NEWS 5
KEVIN Andrews’ highly selective release of fragments of
documents and a chat room discussion designed to convict
Mohamed Haneef of bad character — or much worse —
fails to mention a crucial piece of evidence.
Missing is that part of Haneef’s phone record that
shows he dialled the telephone number of a British police
investigator several times after he was alerted by his family
about the discovery of his SIM card in Liverpool.
The police have perfect records of the phone calls.
There were three calls between 3.08 and 3.29pm, and another
at 4.32pm on the day Andrews is convinced Haneef was trying
to flee Australia in an attempt to evade the law.
When Haneef, in detention in the Brisbane watchhouse,
was asked by police about those phone calls, he gave the answer
the police knew was the only explanation.
‘‘I didn’t get any response to that number,’’ he said. And
neither had he — the records show the calls were not
answered. They were to a British police investigator
named Tony Webster. And why was Haneef trying
to call a British police investigator on the very day Andrews
suggests he was wickedly trying to run from the Australian law?
His own explanation to the Australian Federal Police during
his interrogation in the Queensland watchhouse was simple.
On the day before he tried to leave Australia — when he
already knew of the attempt by his second cousin to bomb
Glasgow Airport — the mother of his other second cousin,
Sabeel Ahmed, had phoned him from Bangalore, India.
She told Haneef that British police had rung her looking for
him. She said, according to Haneef: ‘‘There was something
wrong with your mobile phone. Someone was misusing the
thing.’’ And then she gave Haneef the number of Tony Webster.
The next day, Haneef tried to call Webster. Four times.
Yet there was no mention yesterday by Andrews of this
attempt by Haneef to co-operate with the British police. Instead,
we learned of splinters of a disembodied chat room
god, i will never get the code on this site right :[
Tried to fix it up a little bit, Kina. At least so it wasn’t all a hyperlink.
Interesting point about the call to Webster.
As for the political effect of this whole saga, there appears to be very little chance that this new evidence will help the government. I can’t see too many Australians looking at the latest from the minister and thinking “yeah – he’s tough on terror, alright”. The few that will are likely to vote for him anyway. I can’t see too many “regular” Australians moving their votes as a result.
This is nowhere near Tampa, which made me ill at the time, not so much because of the way the government was behaving, but even worse, that the majority of Australians agreed with them.
I doubt this will be a big vote changer. I certainly don’t hear too many regular Australians talking about it. I think the media are beating it up because there’s otherwise not a whole lot to talk about, in what’s been a fairly slow news period.
Kevin Andrews’ lame attempt to smear Haneef by nod and wink will attract the popular contempt it deserves.
Add to Andrews’ litany of self-serving lies his assertion that an innocent Haneef could have told his side to the Australian media instead of the Indian media.
HELLO! Andrews himself banned Haneef from talking to the media or having his picture taken on Australian soil.
Does Andrews really believe that the Australian public is stupid enough to forget his ham-fisted intrusions?
On the broader question, of course Andrews has the power to exclude whom he wants for whatever reason he may have. Australia has had a long and shameful history of ministerial fiat, all the way back to the martial law regime of the First Fleet.
Once upon a time the Customs Minister could ban whatever he wanted to ban. Don Chipp in the last 1960s finally perceived that this procedure infantalised Australia. He changed it.
Looks like Australia is enduring another era of infantalisation.
I know its poor form, but : what I said!
Oh, look – Andrews didnt mention Haneef’s repeated attempts to contact London Police while allegedly “attempting to evade the law”; or that there’s clear evidence his Aunty first informed him about the whole incident.
It only lasted 12 hours.
This is a debacle, and Andrews must now be sacked. (And yes, Dolly, he should probably ‘crawl in the dirt’.)
WHy anyone actually concerned about national security would vote for these half-arsed, manipulative buffoons is beyond me.
The have zero credibility. They only have eyes are for their own grubby re-election campaigns, not our security.
Scott,
The media is ‘blowing it up’ because the powers that be are concerned that their anti-terror laws have become unusable. Don’t forget the UK has no worries about detaining people with insufficient evidence, it has detained nearly a thousand on terrorist charges without sufficient evidence since 9/11. The UK detained three like Haneef on the same incident before having to let them go without anybody raising protest. This government has tried it once and the whole thing has turned into a farce. This is of concern to those like The Australian as seen by today’s op-ed.
it is interesting how the Right are trying to turn this into a politics of ‘suspicion’, while the left are asking for evidence of wrongdoing. With the visa vs bail shenanigans and two layers of juridico-bureaucratic process maybe the the current government has found a way to successfully wedge in an indirect manner.
‘Suspicion’ is not an objective assessment of a given state of affairs, but an affective relation that accentuates certain tendencies of perception over others. The Right continually allows itself to be interpellated into these media induced games that work through their collective affective disposition. I have a feeling that the ‘Right’ is not ideologically based, but actually an ensemble of people who cannot help but be effected by these media games of affect.
This has been clearly demonstrated by commenters here, for example such as SATP. The odd thing about SATP comments is that he is so sure of himself. Maybe he wants to take the position that is not technically ‘correct’ (in games of truth) but allows him to write in such a way that he feels sure of himself and what he is writing, ie ‘common sense’ (in games of affect).
The Government Gazette is today still editorialising against Andrews, in very strong terms.
” … This week Mr Andrews is stumbling about with both feet firmly in his mouth. …Mr Andrews has done more to fracture public support for the Howard Government’s tough anti-terror laws than any other person. On what was released to support the minister’s decision late yesterday, Mr Andrews has either embellished an online conversation, the significance of which can be discounted from what is already known from elsewhere, or he has let a potential terror suspect walk free. Either way, it does not let Mr Andrews off the hook.
The big question remains why did Mr Andrews get involved… Mr Andrews’ strategic blunders have been compounded by sloppy mistakes on detail as he has continued to cast aspersions on Dr Haneef while stalling on the release of the information on which he made his decision. Mr Andrews eventually released details of an online conversation between Dr Haneef and his brother expressing urgency that Dr Haneef return home following the London and Glasgow terrorist attempts. But we know that Dr Haneef was already aware that police in London had found his SIM card and that he had tried to contact them four times to explain. In light of Dr Haneef’s record of interview, the information relied upon by Mr Andrews was not considered significant enough by police to put before the court.
… if ever there was reason for the Government to feel embarrassed at how it has handled a serious issue, this must be it.
After failing on the introduction of Work Choices, Mr Andrews has reinforced our view that he is a political buffoon. The fact that Mr Andrews’ actions on Dr Haneef are motivated by the potential for political gain is given away by his complaint that the Opposition had not criticised his decision. …”
This is the Australian, not the Age, not the Sydney Morning Herald.
Does anyone here have a sense of deja vu?
Think back to 2001- a month or so before the election.
The government was under criticism for callous treatment of asylum seekers arriving in leaky boats in dangerous waters.
Then – the “fact” (supported by a video, no less) that these people were throwing their children into the water!
Sympathy for the asylum seekers further evaporated!
Of course, that one turned out to be a crock, didn’t it. Selective use of evidence and demonisation of brown Muslim people seems to be the common thread here.
And there’s an election not far down the track, of course…
What’s going on at the Australian? Is Hedley Thomas (who Media Watch pointed out this week is not into clear retractions when he makes a mistake about the Federal Police) writing their editorials on Andrews? Or does Mark moonlight there as well as at Crikey? Haha.
At least the editorial notes, with considerable unhappiness, that maybe the public will swing more behind the government now. I note that Sunrise this morning has gone Andrew’s way. Radio National Breakfast was also seeing it as the government getting more on the front foot.
I reckon that Rudd, if he knows what plays well in the public arena, is not going to spend a lot of time continuing to call for a judicial enquiry. Most of the public will, I suspect, see that as flogging a dead horse. He should just let it quietly slip away.
Because if he had been allowed to hang around under the watchful eye of the AFP, and then brought to Court where all the allegations, ‘suspicions’ etc could be tested, we couldn’t have pictures of federal Ministers doing their ‘duty to care for us’ could we? We would have missed the satsifying spectacle of serious men and women, doing serious things, about our safety or something, on the basis of their ‘reasonable concerns’. And who could quibble with Mummy and Daddy when they are taking action out of their overriding duty of care to us, their dearly beloved citizens Hmm?
Courts and all that crap about beyond reasonable doubt are no good in a war, and this is a war, on our nerves, for ever and ever until Mummy and Daddy says we can all relax. Until then, we should all just hold our breaths.
tig tog/Mark/Lefty E
Can you explain to me this obssession luvvies have with reducing every single socio-political issue that does not go their way to “the rule of law.”
Newsflash. Kevin Andrews is not a judge. He is the Minister for Immigration. He has responsibilities and powers. He has excercised them.
We do not live in a world of Lawyer Kings. Andrews is not delivering a legal verdict in a criminal trial. In societies such as ours different organs and instrumentalities have different jurisdictions, powers, standards of evidence and procedure, and on an on.
It is the same with every geopolitical issue you people push. You all instantly become grand jurists. “International law says!” “The UN says!” “elementary fundamental basic human rights!”
The world is a lot more complex than you seem to understand. While you pine for a future when we are all reduced to one’s and zeros’ in a huge well-oiled computer program, the rest of us will Just Say No!
I love the way the Indian cousin describes the attempt to incinerate innocent holiday-makers at Glasgow airport as ‘project’ management. Perhaps he would describe the Holocaust as some sort of ‘acton working group’? Haneef gets told that ‘they dont know anything about you…get out of there today’; surely that raises doubt in the mind of some of you ladies that he might not be the sweet thing that you are trying to portray. All that bollocks about being concerned about his baby…the baby was born a week previously, why wasnt he booking an urgent flight home then? Hopefully, there will be naan chance of him getting back into this country.
Passing thought: Mr Bugg is stepping down tomorrow, after 8 years as Commonwealth DPP. Perhaps this was a factor in his recommending to drop the charges. Would someone at the begining of their appointment, or facing its renewal, have been prepared to do the same?
Yeah the doctor was so dangerous he was trying to dob himself in to the UK police.
Dezza
Hardly! They’d say it never happened and that it is the Palestinians who have experienced a Holocaust.
Does anyone seriously think that a criminal standard of proof should be required to revoke a visa? Why are people confused about this? If Andrews has a visa applicant who is a known associate of drug dealers, should he let him into Australia just because he does not have a prima facie case that the applicant himself has previously committed criminal acts? Surely not. Revocations are the flip side of this.
Now I for one think this guy is very likely completely innocent. But when you add the inaccurate British police information about the SIM card and where it was found (which the AFP and Andrews quite reasonably relied upon) with the full substance of chat room conversation (which is what has apparently been released, but which we must all agree on its own doesn’t prove or disprove anything) and then add the circumstances surrounding Haneef’s ‘attempted hasty exit’ (as Andrews keeps putting it), anyone can see that that Andrews was acting entirely reasonably, indeed dutifully. The Solicitor-General seems to agree (although no doubt there will now surface various tin-foil hat theories about his involvement in all of this).
And the calls to the British police? They are clearly consistent with innocence. They are also clearly consistent with a decision by Haneef to turn himself in at that point, later to decide otherwise. Revoking the visa until it can be established which is the correct interpretation is the only way to go.
There are more than a few people around here with egg on their faces, they are very unhappy about it, and it shows. They badly wanted this all to be politicised, and when it turns out to be just another reasonable decision by the Minister, they lash out. Sad really.
Cheers
BBB
What I am reminded of is that the business of politicians is politics. This goes double when you are only a few months out from an election, with the polls looking worrying and only national security and the economy providing strong support.
Three things:
1. There’s only one reason I can think of why the Government are pushing this so hard and keeping it so public. It’s working for them. Forgot for a moment the logic of the situation. A fog of uncertainty is being created around Haneef, based on innuendo and scraps of evidence with no proper context. That’s enough to get a sizeable proportion of this country thinking about Muslims and Terrorism and Danger. And in that context, Howard’s “better to be safe than sorry” line will play very well indeed. A phone poll on tv this morning confirms that suspicion, with the vast majority of respondents against the restoration of Haneef’s visa. It does have echoes of Tampa after all.
2. Andrews is only interested in the wedge right now. He won’t be concerned how ridiculous his statements look. If Labor take the bait it will all be worth it.
3. The more the inconsistencies are pointed out, and the more claims that are made that it’s a cynical exercise etc, the better it will play for the Government. They’re only a step away from attacking their critics as being soft on terror as it is.
Geez Dezza, you’re coming along well aren’t you? Handy hint: Try rubbing a couple of sticks together. You might be pleasantly surprised at the result!
The thing that strikes me is that no-one is questioning the truthfulness of what Andrews has said.
You can bang on about conspiracy theories etc, but the moment it was revealed that the AFP had written names etc into Haneef’s diary, was the moment that I stopped trusting anything these people have to say.
What, now I’m supposed to have faith that the Govt. was acting in my best interests because of some alleged chat-room text?
At least handwriting is somewhat difficult to forge.
I think I’ll be suspending judgment until there is an independent inquiry.
… and irrespective of the outcome, Bartlett will still be right about changes needing to be made to the Migration Act.
No matter which side is in Government, anyone who thinks that it is acceptable for this kind of power to be placed in the hands of a minister is a damn fool.
I think that Vile is on the money here. This government’s stocks in trade are lies, fear, smear and inneuendo, and we’re seeing the full hand being played for all it’s worth.
Rule No. 1: Never take a backward step.
No. 2: Smear and raise suspicions about an innocent person or persons enough, and many will believe something is amiss, particularly if that person is a muslim.
No. 3: Raise the fear level high enough and people will forgive your incompentent government anything.
No. 4: Treat the population like fools, making whatever inconsistent and illogical statements increase the community’s fear and suspicion level. Sufficient people are gullible and thoughtless for this to work.
No.5: It doesn’t matter if it’s all found out later to be a crock of shit. HARDLY ANYBODY CARES, and those that do don’t matter.
No.6: Repeat until re-elected.
swordfish
This was my immediate reaction too. I suppose one fact that reduces my natural scepticism was the (supposed) approval of the Solicitor-General and Peter Faris’ being satisfied
The lawyer in me bewails the cock-up and beat-up in this whole process.
The political animal in me understands that the government cannot lose in this affair. Just look at the headlines today.
In truth it a huge storm in a teacup. It’s a symbolic issue for the left & liberal lawyers (emblemising risks to civil liberties) as much as for conservatives (emblemising the need for vigilance).
What it really shows is how untouched by terrorism and relatively safe Australia is. Two laughably botched car attacks on the other side of the world, and a lone figure in Qld who left a SIM card behind. And that’s generated weeks of headlines and acres of blogging.
Vile said:
Oh for crying out loud. It might also have something to do with the fact that everyone from commenters here, Haneef’s lawyers, the Australian and The Age are insisting that Andrews has to justify himself.
If the critics weren’t so vocal on doubting that he made a legitimate exercise of his discretion, Andrews would not have had anything like the justification he presently has for his release of information yesterday.
The attitude of most commenters here is that there must be strong criticism of the government to be found somewhere here, and you just don’t care how inconsistent your later criticism may appear to be in light of your earlier criticism.
Sorry, that should have been Ville, not Vile.
No. This has been firmly established.
Now can we move on?
Here are some more interesting questions:
1. Should a minister have this power? This will produce much beard tugging and head scratching.
2. Could Andrews have done a more inept job of exercising his undoubted powers? This is producing quick consensus that Andrews is a stumblebum putz.
It may be working for them, but I tend to think Rudd should slip a wee comment out, like “we need more competent people on the front line, this is an embarassing shambles.”
Stick the wedge right up Andrews arse. See who drops it like a hot potato then.
Im curious about the solicitor general’s advice.
Six matters were before the Minister, he says, five of which were enought to enliven his ministerial discretion.
1 to five were: 1. They are cousins, 2. Hanneef shared digs with Sabeel (SG indicates that Haneef’s initial statement misunderstood – Haneef lived in digs after Sabeel left), 3. Kafeel lends money to Haneef, 4. the sim card with credit on it found in the burning jeep (SG indicates this is incorrect info), 5. Internet chatroom conversations with Sabeel, relating to family matters.
6. the online chat with brother.
It was the online chat with brother which warranted the revocation of the visa, according to Andrews. Its enough he says. The other five worked to “enliven” ministerial discretion.
I am very curious about the online chat with Sabeel. Why has this not been released? Here “direct association” is indicated by the continuing relations between the cousins after Haneef’s entry into australia. I would love to see the transcript of this chat – and the family matters it entails – why not release this? After all, here are communications with the alleged terrorist (he has not even been charged with this has he – how silly is this getting?), and Minister Andrews instead relies on an ambigous chat with his brother?
…fascinating.
Dezza, I know this is a long thread. Please try to keep up and not reintroduce points made and reponded to yesterday.
Prediction noted.
This was brought up earlier in this thread and elsewhere and has now been confirmed.
The Minister has been totally selective. Haneef is innocent of no crime except that of not being able to choose his relatives.
Time for another organism.
Thanks Katz.
Yes, he should. Perhaps this question has caused you ‘much head scratching’. I, for one, can see why. Now on occassion it will be desirable for vistors to Australia to be sent home (ie. for their vises to be revoked). Someone has to be responisble for that decision. I would prefer it to be the person at the top. The Minister. Would you prefer some judge? Or some low-ranking DIMIA officer whose actions are less likely to be scrutinised? What benefits acrrue if someone other than the Minister gets to decide? No doubt this will cause you much beard-tugging.
You are now making a terrible fool of yourself. Remember the case against Andrews before was that his was a purely political decision with no reasonable basis. That case has now spectacularly collapsed (much like the criminal case against Haneef). Now there is an appeal to ineptness. What you are really saying is that Andrews was not able to successfully sell his decision to Teh Left. You are effectively condemning his decision, not because it was unreasonable, but because Teh Left jumped to incorrect conclusions about its underlying rationale. I tend to reserve the ‘stumblebum putz’ lines for those who get it seriously wrong, but have not yet figured that out. Your lack of self-awareness here is staggering.
Cheers
BBB
Andrews’ spin lasted all of 12 hours.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/give-us-the-whole-story-minister/2007/07/31/1185647901382.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/01/1993717.htm
Give up BBB. Even the Government Gazette has declared Andrews a “political buffoon”.
Natural justice and due process of law.
Well yes. The point is here we have a puppet of a Minister driven like punch from the back room boys.
Then you got a portfoilio which give theImmigration Minister absolute power which is unaccoutable & non reportable whenit comes to issuing & cancelling a Visa…
The rabid right can’t have it both ways. Either Haneef is an innocent man, in which case he has been wronged by a cynical and inept government. Or he is a guilty man in which case he has been let free by a cynical and inept government.
And why are those so keen to judge him able blithely to ignore the fact that he called British police four times before departing. Or is this highly suspicious too?
Perhaps you would go as far as a caller to Virginia Trioli this morning and say that he is guilty because he is a callous man who didn’t attend the birth of his child.
BBB & others, I wish you would stop referring to the “The Howard Govt did it, so it must be wrong” club as the “left”.
Maligning the left by associating them with a fringe group of reason-challenged chatterati is akin to assuming that screeching activists of the leather-and-drugs exhibitionist clique speak for ALL homos.
Adrian, you are so far out of your depth it is scary. You haven’t absorbed anything in this thread, have you? A person does not have to be innocent of committing a crime for his or her visa to be reasonably revoked or refused on character grounds. This is why most people would have been happy for the Minister to refuse a visa application from, say, David Irving prior to his conviction in wherever it was.
BBB
Like Helen, I think the government wants to keep this in the headlines for as long as possible. SMH reports the “Grandmother” clause ie the silent majority appluading the strong stance.
This issue is causing enormous damage to Australia’s reputation. I heard a news report that recruitment agencies are reporting that overseas trained doctors are reluctant to come to Australia. ABC also reported that in Hervey Bay 104 of the 106 medical staff are from overseas.
The outcome of the xenophobic behaviour of this government is that Australia’s health system will suffer enormously for a long time to come. JH and his govt must be booted out for bringing Australia into disrepute.
Costello has stated that JH will do anything to win an election and JH confirmed it on the 7.30 report. JH will destroy Australia to win.
In addition, it also alienating existing migrants and permanent residents. There is real fear amongst migrants about (1)activities of relatives overseas destroying peoples lives here and (2) the power of the AFP and the Minister. People are starting to feel insecure. This does not augur well for the future.
Australia was one of the best countries in the world and I am so sad and depressed that it now has a government stoking racism and willing to plumb new depths to win.
Is that so BBB? Since when was the Australian a mouthpiece for TEH Left? In this editorial comment, The Australian is calling Andrews essentially a stumblebum putz. Viz.:
It would appear to any sensible reader of BBB’s comments that he is attempting to smear anyone who comments on Andrews’ competence as a Leftist propagandist. Certainly, BBB is not attempting to engage with the argument that establishes Kevin Andrews to be a stumblebum putz.
It’s very unusual for Katz and the Government Gazette to agree on anything to do with governance. When they do it would behove BBB to pay greater attention.
Time to stop making a fool of yourself BBB.
SATP: it’s a fair cop. It’s true that I’ve used the term ‘Teh Left’ gratuitously. However, it’s a useful label, just like ‘neo-cons’, ‘wingnuts’ and ‘the right’ are useful labels sometimes.
Cheers
BBB
TEH LEFT AND PROWD!
Shorter Katz: if The Australian and Katz agree, they must each be correct.
Is that really all you’ve got? Good grief. I suppose I’ll just wait until The Age publishes something I agree with, so I can wave it around hysterically: “I’m right, I’m right!”. Hmmm…
BBB
BBB, I believe I have a far greater understanding of the Migration Act than you do, and if you’d bothered to read my comment on a previous thread quoting the Act you’d realise that I am fully conversant with the ministers powers under the Act. These powers, as I showed on an earlier thread are so broad as to be basically unrestricted.
You miss the point, which isn’t whether or not there is a different level of proof when clearly there is -in fact there is NO proof required by the minister in the exercise of his powers. The point is should an incompetent buffoon such as Andrews, or indeed any minister, be allowed such wide discretionary powers without any judicial oversight, and which specifically deny natural justice.
And if you answer yes to that question, should those powers be used to effectively overturn the decision of a Court?
The end result is that the government is implying all sorts of devious motives to Haneef, the implication being that he is guilty of something associated with terrorism. In which case they shouldn’t have let him leave the country.
Do try to keep up.
Lefty E: Hedley Thomas reported the phone calls to England on 19 July. You act as if this is some revelation. It is, in fact, just ridiculous of Tony Wright in The Age to be arguing that the Minister is being somehow disingenuous in not talking about those calls yesterday. We already knew; he called the press conference to tell us something we didn’t already know.
Quite right BBB.
And it is just fabulous that we have a system where those with a penchant for good old fashioned faith and values based judgements of people and their actions, may look to Minister Andrews and his grasp of the handy provisons of the Migration Act, for repeated demonstrations of Executive power, untramelled by anything really, except Minister Andrews’ obviously superior capacity for discernment of the truth about character.
Really, the people around here who simply just don’t understand the difference between the criminal law, and the law understoood as the exercise of demonstrated values sharing, simply have no idea about how this place runs. It makes you wonder how they will be made to understand anything at all.
See? Laurie Oakes agrees with me.
But I want to record the fact that I called Kevin Andrews a “stumble-bum” before Laurie Oakes did!
I disagree Steve. Demonstrable attempts to cooperate with police inquiries go squarely to to the issue of “character”; especially given Andrews’ selective insinuation that Haneef was trying to avoid scrutiny.
It also goes to whether Andrews’ suspicion was “reasonable” – which is the relevant (though meaningless, it would seem) test.
I hadnt heard of the calls before – and I suspect most Australians hadnt.
Steve from Brisbane wrote:
Well, the question here is: what might he do if the mood of the public at large was that this was an almighty stuff-up, and was costing the Coalition votes? Politically, there wouldn’t be a lot of sense in standing up and inflaming the issue with comments on how Haneef wouldn’t speak to our press, or that his leaving the country as soon as he got his passport back was suspicious rather than prudent (given the treatment he’s had so far).
I’d suggest that if the issue wasn’t playing well for the Government, they’d be handling the whole matter in a much more low-key way, and parrying criticism with a dead bat.
I had heard of the calls before, but the “new” thing about them is that they appear to have been confirmed.
For me, at least, it does appear that he was worried about being pinged by association and was trying to get out first.
“Now on occassion it will be desirable for vistors to Australia to be sent home (ie. for their vises to be revoked). Someone has to be responisble for that decision.”
BBB, surely the point here is that the discretion was invoked not to send Haneef home, but to keep him in Australia under lock and key (after a magistrate, as we now learn on _the same evidence_ determined he was a, er, ‘$10,000 bond and report to the cops every second day’ sort of threat to the community).
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Andrews being able to send people home, I’d like to hear your defence of his powers to determine whether people should be locked up or allowed to move freely in the community, as opposed to the judiciary who have had a monopoly on this power since Runnymede.
And since you’re upset that Andrews is being called out for being a stumblebum, let’s hear your defence of the Andrews lines about how complying with _Andrews’s own _ orders to leave the country, and not to speak to the Australian media, are suspicious.
Anyway, as its all just a hamfisted wedge: next!
BBB and JG, it is you two, who are not keeping up….the issue isn’t whether Andrews has this power (and this is definitely a debate worth having) but the question is, why did he intervene after Haneef was bailed and prejudice the case by his intervention? At that stage, it was not known the DPP’s case was going to fall apart.
Haneef obviously wasn’t a threat to the community, he had surrendered his passport, he had posted a bond. He was going to have to turn up in an Australian court and face charges. There was absolutely no need to revoke his visa at that stage and lock him up in detention.
Andrews totally avoided answering this question on Lateline last night – by doing exactly what you both are doing – banging on about his separate responsibilities.
But his responsibility surely, was to ensure that if Haneef was found guilty, that his visa was then revoked, or if insufficient evidence for a criminal charge was the result of the case – ONLY then should he have reviewed all the evidence and made a decision in respect of Haneef’s visa. I personally think he shouldn’t have this power, but that is beside the point.
Andrews’ pre-empted and prejudiced the case by his overreaching intervention – he then selectively released evidence to cover his own arse, and is now reduced to telling blatant porky pies for the 6 o’clock news.
My other concern in this matter – is that our local muslim population have yet another reason to feel aggrieved at treatment of muslims by the federal government. The ramifications of ‘rough justice’ for one minority group over a long period of time – is something we should be concerned about.
Amused,
Haneef clearly fails the legislative character test. This is not a case in which Andrews’ discretion is beyond the scope of the legislature’s intent. Note that point: the Minister’s discretion remains bounded by legislation. Now it has been a while since I did Admin, but my understanding is that Andrews’ decisions are susceptible to judicial review for jurisdictional error. The HCA dealt with this back in 2003. This is why Julian Burnside bothered to write that piece claiming that Haneef’s prospects in the Federal Court appeal against Andrews’ decision to cancel Haneef’s visa were good (on the basis of improper purposes). It is simply not true to assert that the executive’s powers are ‘untramelled’ under the Migration Act. It’s just wrong.
Adrien,
‘Bothered to read’? I can’t read everything you write in every thread. We are having a discussion in here, not there. Can I return the favour? “Adrien, if you have bothered to read my comments over at Club Troppo on this, you’d know…” But look, no doubt you are ‘conversant’ with the Migration Act. I will defer to your judgment on that score. Here’s what you said: “The point is should an incompetent buffoon such as Andrews, or indeed any minister, be allowed such wide discretionary powers without any judicial oversight” How’d you miss the whole jurisdictional error thing, though? It’s kinda important.
Cheers
BBB
A referendum on the matter would reveal something like 99% support for the way the Haneef case turned out.
The same referendum would reveal something like 99% belief that an ALP government would have handled the Haneef case in exactly the same manner.
A wedge is a wedge is a wedge. Not worth spending much more time as this leopard won’t change his spots. They may lose office though.
It is very refreshing to that the majority of people is seeing this for what it is: nasty grubby politics that is making Australia a less safe place by compromising our reaction to terrorist threats, and alienating yet another demographic, as well as besmirching Australia’s international reputation yet again.
Rabbit #1: Indigenous Emergency (gone a bit quiet now)
Rabbit #2: SIM card and chat room terrorism (alleged & beatup, but another fizzer)
Rabbit #3: Federal intervention for those pesky states (water, education etc)
What will rabbit #4 be?
Keelty is still spinning the SIM lie.
“For all that’s been said about the SIM card, the SIM card is still in the vicinity of London at the time the devices were attempted to be exploded,” he said.
“The SIM card is still at Glasgow, at the airport, at the time that the attempted bombing happened there, so whilst there’s been a lot of focus on exactly where the SIM card was, as I’ve said in these sorts of investigations information changes very quickly.”
“It is very refreshing to that the majority of people is seeing this for what it is: nasty grubby politics that is making Australia a less safe place by compromising our reaction to terrorist threats, and alienating yet another demographic, as well as besmirching Australia’s international reputation yet again.”
Like I said a little earlier: the lack of self-awareness here is staggering.
BBB
I want to know from Dr Haneef why he waited a week to suddenly make the decision to go and see Mother and Baby????????
Why the delay?? Why the apparent change of mind?? Call me a big wuss but if my wife went into labour prematurely and I wasn’t in the same country I’d be on a plane before you could say “here’s your boarding pass”.
I also want to know why his Australian Lawyer needs to be in Bangalore with him now??? He must be on one heck of a retainer!!! Maybe he is still trying to develop the “vibe” defence?
BBB, to take you up on a point you raised earlier in the thread: I don’t believe the Minister for Immigration should have responsibility for making administrative decisions about individuals being dealt with by the Department. Partly that’s a matter of history and other Ministers for Immigration abusing their power—and I’m thinking especially of Andrew Theophanous’ mates in the Keating governments—but mostly I don’t think you can sustain the assertion that you’d like decisions on procedural matters of public administration to be made by “the person at the top”. The person at the top is a political seat-holder there by weight of votes, not merit or length of service, and they’re never as well qualified as a trained public servant.
Though they *should* reasonably keep abreast of the activities of their Department, Ministers *shouldn’t* be allowed to micro-manage, especially when it comes to sensitive procedural matters. State Planning Ministers, for instance, shouldn’t get to say which DAs go ahead and which get knocked. Ministerial micro-management is an affliction on all levels of Australian government.
“I also want to know why his Australian Lawyer needs to be in Bangalore with him now???”
Why do you care? Are you footing the bill?
His lawyer is with him either for a healthy retainer, or for the resume building glory.
He is there to make the bullets for Haneef to fire. His words to the press in India are clearly designed for Australian domestic political impact, so his lawyer is making his mark.
However
Haneef’s lawyers words…. Haneef’s words have been resoundingly trumped by the revelations (true false or ambiguous as they may be) of Kevin Andrews.“I want to know from Dr Haneef why he waited a week to suddenly make the decision to go and see Mother and Baby????????”
That is a good question, but one the AFP flat foots didn’t ask Haneef, according to the first record of interview.
Maybe he couldn’t get leave from the hospital, but we don’t know because the rozzers didn’t think to ask.
But it would help Haneef’s case if he it comes out that he did ask for leave before the bombing? Probably not.
Spiros, Haneef asked for leave on the afternoon of the 2nd of July. This timing assists people to arrive at the conclusion that he was behaving in an unusual manner.
Fair enough, Liam.
You make a very valid point about micro-managing. I suspect the reason that Ministers exercise high levels of control is that they are the objects of public blame if mistakes are made. The corollary of your position, if I can use that term, is probably that a Minister ought not be held micro-responsible for the conduct of public servants to whom discretion has been delegated (assuming an appropriate level of supervision has been adopted).
I think my position on ministerial discretion over visas can still be maintained, though. Importantly, the Minister is able to seek and rely upon the advice of well-trained, senior public servants in the exercise of his or her discretions.
Cheers
BBB
Brendan [at 11:34am]:
I’m tempted to agree with you when you say
“he who runs may read” and all that …. however, the comment by Noocat way back at 1:06am 1st August is worth reading and re-reading. The comment has distilled the essence of the whole farce and it points out the very real dangers to all of us this over it.
Peterc:
Disagree. It will be interesting to see if this farce triggers an invitation from the Governor-General to John Howard for a little chat about his imminent retirement plans – election or no election. The spots just might change the leopard ….
Well, why didn’t the AFP ask him why he didn’t catch the first plane out as soon as he heard his wife was in labour?
Which isn’t to say that he should have necessarily. Maybe it’s not the done thing for Indian men, or Moslem men, or Moslem Indian men to be present at the birth of their children.
I’m still trying to get my head around Keelty’s remarks re the SIM card. It seems the SIM now has magical properties that allow it to be in three places at once.
The whole affair is essentially a security matter.
Somewhat politicised (as much by the press as by the govt – but have you ever seen a politician pass up a chance to make political mileage?) however it remains a case of the police hauling in a person of interest to them who began behaving in an unusual manner.
Even though dogged by varying levels of police competence, and steps which in hindsight could have been done better, the investigation came up no trumps and the person of interest, though not exonerated, was released and expelled.
Politics are peripheral to this case.
I want to know:
Why did he come here in the first place? Highly suspicious.
Why did he father a baby? So he could later use it as an excuse to leave the country?
Why didn’t he talk to the media here and not in India? Very sneaky.
Why did he grow a beard? Trying to hide something?
Why did he ask for leave at all? Highly suspicious…
Why did he telephone British police four times and not know why he didn’t receive an answer?
Why did he train to become a doctor?
All these questions and more should be answered so the paranoid right can contionue to make fools of themselves.
Hey Graham, reality called – it wants to know when you’re coming home.
Well yes. That’s rather the point, and my heart bleeds for the poor, poor Ministers.
I think your point on Ministerial discretion needs qualification. The Minister for Immigration should obviously exercise ultimate discretion, but as you say, they should be dependent on the advice of their Department, and more importantly, their decisions should be as open and made in as transparent a way as is possible—something that’s not happening at all in Dr. Haneef’s case, to the point where I think only Dr. Haneef himself really knows the full story. And, if the decisions Ministers take upon themselves turn out to be wrong or have bad consequences, they ought to wear the consequences.
Spiros – “Maybe he couldn’t get leave from the hospital”
What “No staffing Crisis” planet are you on. Any Doctor in any hospital in Australia just has to turn around and say “I am going on leave” and the hospital bends over backwards to make sure they know that they are a valued employee/consultant and hope they have a nice leave and see you as soon as you are ready to start back. That’s why we have all these overseas trained Dr’s. There is a bloody shortage!!!!
And as for not being at the birth – what? he had to wait a week?, as opposed to not being in the same room???
It’s also a bit difficult to get there in time when the birth is not merely premature labour but an emergency caesarean. Also, Haneef’s wife was surrounded by his and her extended family in Bangalore, in a culture where birthing is very much women’s business.
There are vast cultural differences in what is expected of fathers at the time of births. I wouldn’t be surprised if Haneef taking immediate emergency leave would be a reaction that would be culturally frowned upon as financially irresponsible adn career-risking for a man in Haneef’s position.
Adrian you’ve overlooked the question that is the Indian elephant in the room in l’affaire Haneef:
Knowing that Muslins are bent on world conquest through violent jihad, why has Dr Haneef not publicly denounced his co-religionists, especially that dumbass one from Lakemba?
His failure to do this speaks volumes.
Turn your blood pressure down a few notches, Razor, before you blow a gasket. I was just asking.
Aren’t you just a bit curious why the AFP doesn’t ask these seemingly obvious questions?
“Mr Keelty added to confusion about Dr Haneef’s SIM card today when he suggested it was in the vicinity of both failed bomb plots in London and Glasgow.
However, an AFP spokesman was later forced to clarify the police chief’s comments, saying he had meant to say the SIM card was linked to people in the vicinity of the failed bombings.”
For fuck’s sake.
The answer to “we’re in a hole” is not “we need a bigger shovel”
*Muslims
Very decent of Keelty to blow away the Andrews spin by throwing up the confusion of the day.
The government must really, really hate Keelty.
Liam,
Agree 100%.
Cheers
BBB
It sure does, Ken. I think that if he really wants to clear his name he should denounce his faith, and all who abide by it. Anything less is highly suspicious, don’t you think????
Cripes, its like the three stooges out there: Andy, Keelty and J-Ho.
London?? WTF!!!??
My guess is Australians will feel a lot safer when there’s a new government. These clowns are friggin’ useless on point.
Bring on the election.
I am sorry Dr. Haneef had to be deported for committing an offence against good dress sense.
Striped shirt and striped tie?
New election slogans:
We decide who stuffs up and the manner in which the stuff up occurs.
OR
Competence rates will always be lower under a Liberal Government.
CraigMc:
ha-ha-ha. Do you honestly think you and I and the handful of active participants are the only ones who look at this very popular site or at ones like Club Troppo, Road To Surfdom, Planet Irf, etc., etc. to see what the general public is talking about? Get real.
I know the difference between being in touch with reality and chucking out a polite challenge, do you?
Spelling it out for you in simple terms …. I want to know why hell the taxpayers are forking out for the bloke in the feathery hat when he has had more than enough opportunities for him to show that he is his own man by pulling the runaway Prime Minister back into line.
If he can’t handle the job in this time of peril then he should step down himself and leave the job to someone with the requisite toughness handle both the job and whoever is in The Lodge.
Clear enough for you now?
Yes, firstly to prove himself, Haneef should just abject himself and denounce every terrorist act committed by a muslim ever in the world since the beginning of time. As well as every inane statement made by Hilaly at Lakemba cause thats what you do, isnt it, when you have stared down the barrel of a 15 year sentance. The first thing you do when you get out is publicly denounce Hilaly for the meat thing.
Anything less makes him guilty.
Is that right?
geez, its a hard thing to be innocent and a Muslim in Australia innit?
Ratty defends “The Undertaker”
“I’ve always believed that he took the right decision, I was across the reason for him taking that decision, I’ve made that known, I’ve supported him,” Mr Howard said in Tasmania.
“He has been unfairly criticised but he has, to some extent, been vindicated by it being possible to make some of this information available.
“But there will some people who will continue to attack him.”
Labor was still running a “cynical double game” on the Haneef affair, with federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd staying out of the row and allowing Queensland Premier Peter Beattie to attack Mr Andrews, Mr Howard said
We certainly need to tighten up on those anti-terrorist laws, I can see it now, the Keelty amendment:
Sim Card (Consorting in the Vicinity) Anti-Terrorist Amendment Bill 2007 Cth.
Graham Bell should be nominated for a Constitutional Law Scholarship for his new and unique interpretation of the powers of the Governor General. Either that or he needs to stop having flashbacks to 1975.
He’s joking, Razor.
BBB
Further to the Haneef saga and the increasingly pushy attitude of the Executive to the Constitution, we have the Jack Thomas control order decision coming down tomorrow morning. I have written a piece up here on the subject – will we see the High Court start to rein in the Executive, or continue along the path it started down with the migration decisions it made earlier this decade?
Ken Lovell:
I’m totally with you 110 percent on this one Ken.
I myself have been known to accuse white christian folk of being Nazis for not saying “I don’t like Hitler” every time they open their mouths. Works for me. Their failure to say this speaks volumes.
… and Razor should be nominated for The Terrible Tautology (TTT) Award, based on the first sentence above.
One of the best I have seen for a long time.
Actually this issue is getting a bit boring now and I dont think I could stand seeing Andrews on tv again.
We now have Howard’s new anarchy/federalism policy.
It’s hard to spot the satire from the delusions some days.
If they have Haneef’s SIM card and chat site details, why don’t they just release the phone numbers and URLs publically?
That way, and at no further cost to the taxpayer, the matter can be properly investigated, assessed and judged by the blogosphere with its usual impartial, thoughtful and rigourous attention to detail, nuance, scale and scope.
Dateline had a piece on Haneef tonight. Released an Indian police dossier here
which suggests he has been involved with Al Quaeda.
If you ask me, spurious sensationalist reporting without any investigation of the allegations in the dossier. Since Dateline conducted its vivisection of Morgan Tsvangirai on the eve of 2002 elections in Zimbabwe (suggesting he was involved in a plot to assassinate Mugabe), I have never trusted Dateline. Never.
better still, try this link
Correct URL for Dateline Dossier is here
FRom what I can see pretty shallow stuff.
It did not take long for JWH to change the subject to “lets bash the states”- in this case Tassie. The SMH tried hard to support the terror scare; their political writer referred to the battlers—”healthy fear of terrorism”, what a crock……..
Any journalist who thinks fear of terrorism is healthy is beyond redemption.
Razor:
The only one having flashbacks to 1975 and seeing the ghost of Sir John Kerr popping out of his toilet-bowl is the current resident of Yarralumla.
Much and all as I disliked him, I’m sure Peter Hollingworth, had he remained Governor-General, would not have put up with all the shenanegans by the current Prime Minister. This is still Australia, not Mugabe’s Zimbabwe …. yet.
If being a check on the manifest abuses of executive power is not one of the duties of Governor-General then why the hell does the position exist at all? Abolish the position and be done with it then just declare Mr Howard himself President-for-Life or whatever else he wants.
b.t.w. How much does that scholarship pay and what are the perks? Please sign me up for it.
BingoBangoBoingo:
Not joking – but very very very annoyed at the unnecessary and unrestrained destruction of our traditional rights and protections..
CraigMc:
Didn’t you appreciate what I said about your favorite “defender of liberty”? Stiff!
Can imagine the excitement and joy of the pack of RWDB’s when they hear of this nice juicy morsel.
They will sniff it, bite it, circle it, throw it in the air and catch it, roll it in the dirt and declare it suspicious and that tentatively it suffices as favourite toy and food.
Forgive me if these questions have already been asked but…
In what language was the Haneef chatroom ‘chat’ held? If not in english, who provided the translations that the Minister has released? Considering the openess to interpretation of some of the comments made, it is possible to imagine that the translation is quite important.
What was spoken about in previous ‘chats’? Has a single conversation been taken out of context? (a bit like how you crop a photo – for example, see Reith, Peter).
Sad to have so little faith in the government.
There’ll be organisms all round the RWDB blogosphere tonight!
What do you know – it wasn’t satire after all.
Zorro:
Yes. A retranslation of the original – and in context – would be nice. Any professional translator or interpreter worth their salt would welcome the efforts of a fellow professional on work they had already done and be delighted to get confirmation, clarification or correction of such work.
However, political wallahs doing point-scoring might not welcome any such retranslation.
Sadly, in Australia these days, a lack of faith in government has become essential for your own survival.
Rabbit #4 = Prime Minister John Howard’s Tasmanian hospital announcement, following the “beat up on Labor states” theme.
CraigMc:
Disappointed you didn’t continue quoting me as far as a comparison of government probity in Australia with that in Zimbabwe.
I feel yer getting somewhat histronic there Graham and so doing your views no favour. True the current Coalition Government sits there like an overipe avacodo, rrotten, oozing and attracting flies with the price artifically inflated, more that ready to be replaced by a fresh, ripening ALP mango delivered at market prices, all plump, juicy and cleanskinned until you eventually bite down on the big stone and notice the circling fruitbats.
But either way, we will survive. On wheat and potatoes generally I suspect.
You know I`m more conerned about the Koreans in Afganhistan at the moment than I am about the
good Doctor
Lost in Translation and another bungle.
AUSTRALIAN Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty yesterday added another gaffe to the mistake-strewn case against Mohamed Haneef, confusing the location of the terror suspect’s mobile phone SIM card.
Just days after the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the case against Dr Haneef after admitting errors in its evidence relating to the SIM card, Mr Keelty was yesterday forced to retract claims made earlier in the day that the card was found in the vicinity of the failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow in late June.
The card, which prosecutors told the court was found in the burning Jeep that crashed into Glasgow airport, was actually found 300km away in the English city of Liverpool with Dr Haneef’s second-cousin Sabeel Ahmed. Mr Keelty yesterday argued that the fact the card was not in the explosive-laden jeep did not diminish its importance.
“For all that’s been said about the SIM card, the SIM card is still in the vicinity of London at the time that the devices were attempted to be exploded,” he told journalists. “The SIM card is still at Glasgow, at the airport, at the time that the attempted bombing happened there.”
An AFP spokesman later corrected the comment, explaining that the commissioner had intended to say the SIM card was linked to people in the vicinity of the attempted bombings.
Mr Keelty’s blunder came as it emerged that a conversation between Dr Haneef and his brother, relied upon by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews to deport Dr Haneef, had been conducted in Urdu and translated into English.
Mr Andrews yesterday conceded the conversation was not in English, but rejected calls for the original-language version to be released for independent scrutiny and translation.
According to the translation provided by Mr Andrews on Tuesday, the conversation on an internet chatroom shows Dr Haneef’s brother urging the terror suspect to leave Australia as quickly as possible as “nothing has been found out about you”.
Dr Haneef, speaking in Bangalore last night, agreed that the transcript as released by Mr Andrews had been taken out of context. “Once you get the (full transcript of) the whole chat, you will understand it,” he said.
Mr Keelty said the troubled investigation into Dr Haneef was neither over nor bungled, and the 27-year-old Indian Muslim, now home in Bangalore, could still face criminal charges. “It’s still potentially possible that a brief of evidence will be submitted against Dr Haneef,” he said.
And he confirmed that a second Indian-trained doctor in Queensland, Mohamed Asif Ali, an associate of Dr Haneef who was initially detained on suspicion of links to the British terror attacks and then released, remained a person of interest and would be “until we satisfy ourselves we know everything we should know about Dr Ali”.
Last night SBS’s Dateline program showed an undated Indian police dossier suggesting a link between Dr Haneef and the al-Qa’ida terrorist group, but it remained unclear whether it had been prepared after advice received from Scotland Yard or the AFP. One section — titled “Organisational set-up” refers to “alleged links to al-Qa’ida” but provided no other details.
Asked last night about the claims, Dr Haneef said: “I have no idea on these things. Sorry, I can’t comment.”
Dr Haneef, a registrar at the Gold Coast Hospital, was arrested at Brisbane International Airport on July 12, held for 12 days and charged with reckless assistance to terrorists. After being granted bail, his work visa was controversially cancelled on character grounds by Mr Andrews, and Dr Haneef was ordered to remain in custody. He was released last Friday after the prosecution case collapsed over the flawed evidence.
Mr Keelty yesterday raised the possibility Dr Haneef might face further questioning in India.
“We are communicating with the Indian police,” he said.
Indian anti-terror police last night warned Dr Haneef they wanted to “interrogate” him over his links to alleged British bombers Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed. Officers of the Anti-Terrorism Squad in Bangalore were reported to have called at Dr Haneef’s family home and told relatives to pass on the message they wanted to speak to him.
The joint Commissioner of Police in Karnataka state, Gopal B. Hosur, told The Australian last night it was likely that Dr Haneef would be called for questioning in a few days.
Mr Keelty’s confusion over the SIM card, and his new warning that Dr Haneef could again be charged, drew an angry response from Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who said it was imperative for a national inquiry to resolve the saga.
Mr Beattie told The Australian last night he was “amazed” at Mr Keelty’s latest comments. “I can’t understand why, if that’s true, they let him leave the country,” Mr Beattie said when asked about Mr Keelty’s comments that a prosecution could still ensue.
Mr Beattie remained scathing of Mr Andrews, accusing him of trying to save his political hide by selectively releasing parts of an internet conversation between Dr Haneef and his brother.
“I think most people will only be satisfied when they get the whole transcript,” he said.
Dr Haneef’s solicitor, Peter Russo, who has been in Bangalore with his client since the weekend, sharply criticised the latest development. Mr Russo said he was sick of seeing Dr Haneef’s name slandered without reason, and he called on police to produce the entire record of interview.
Additional reporting: Bruce Loudon, Sarah Elks
This is the real issue and one which Andrews and the cheersquad of RWDB’s will not touch with a forty foot barge pole.
New Haneef thread, everyone.