India Demands Explanation on Suspect

India demands Haneef arrest explanation

The Indian Government has demanded an explanation of Australia’s treatment of terror suspect Dr Mohamed Haneef, who remained in police custody last night as his legal team fought to keep him out of an immigration detention centre.

India’s External Affairs Department yesterday called in Australia’s high commissioner to Delhi, John McCarthy, to seek an explanation.

A spokesman for Australia’s Foreign Affairs Department said last night that Mr McCarthy had provided the Indian officials with information about what had happened in the case.

The spokesman said the high commissioner and others in the high commission had been in regular contact with Indian authorities on the issue since Haneef’s detention.

Indian media reports quoted External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna as saying that the ministry had voiced concern that the Indian-born doctor ’should be treated fairly and justly under Australian law‘.

The bizarre legal tangle that has engulfed the terror suspect became even more confusing yesterday when his legal team decided not to post bail, preventing him from being sent to an immigration detention centre in Sydney.

Instead, the Indian-born doctor remained in a Brisbane watchhouse while his growing band of lawyers and barristers prepared an appeal against Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews’ decision to strip him of his 457 work visa.

But Mr Andrews said that whatever happened to Haneef in the legal system, he would eventually be deported.

Haneef’s legal team took the unusual step of releasing the 52-page document that Mr Andrews has used to justify his decision to strip Haneef of his visa and to order that he be placed in an immigration detention centre.

Additional allegations of Haneef’s alleged possible association with his mother’s cousins Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed, who are alleged to be terrorists in Britain, have been removed by the Government, citing the Migration Act. The allegations have not been disclosed to Haneef, the document says.

Haneef’s Brisbane-based lawyer, Peter Russo, said the documents were being released ’so the public can be fully informed’.

The legal team’s decision followed Mr Andrews’ statement to reporters yesterday that he had not revoked Haneef’s visa simply because the doctor’s second cousins were allegedly involved in criminal conduct in Britain.

However, the documents showed that Mr Andrews’ stated reasons for finding that Haneef failed the character test centred his ‘association’ with his second cousins.

The Indian Government has demanded an explanation of Australia’s treatment of terror suspect Dr Mohamed Haneef, who remained in police custody last night as his legal team fought to keep him out of an immigration detention centre.

India’s External Affairs Department yesterday called in Australia’s high commissioner to Delhi, John McCarthy, to seek an explanation.

A spokesman for Australia’s Foreign Affairs Department said last night that Mr McCarthy had provided the Indian officials with information about what had happened in the case.

The spokesman said the high commissioner and others in the high commission had been in regular contact with Indian authorities on the issue since Haneef’s detention.

Indian media reports quoted External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna as saying that the ministry had voiced concern that the Indian-born doctor ’should be treated fairly and justly under Australian law’.

The bizarre legal tangle that has engulfed the terror suspect became even more confusing yesterday when his legal team decided not to post bail, preventing him from being sent to an immigration detention centre in Sydney.

Instead, the Indian-born doctor remained in a Brisbane watchhouse while his growing band of lawyers and barristers prepared an appeal against Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews’ decision to strip him of his 457 work visa.

But Mr Andrews said that whatever happened to Haneef in the legal system, he would eventually be deported.

Haneef’s legal team took the unusual step of releasing the 52-page document that Mr Andrews has used to justify his decision to strip Haneef of his visa and to order that he be placed in an immigration detention centre.

Additional allegations of Haneef’s alleged possible association with his mother’s cousins Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed, who are alleged to be terrorists in Britain, have been removed by the Government, citing the Migration Act. The allegations have not been disclosed to Haneef, the document says.

Haneef’s Brisbane-based lawyer, Peter Russo, said the documents were being released ’so the public can be fully informed’.

The legal team’s decision followed Mr Andrews’ statement to reporters yesterday that he had not revoked Haneef’s visa simply because the doctor’s second cousins were allegedly involved in criminal conduct in Britain.

However, the documents showed that Mr Andrews’ stated reasons for finding that Haneef failed the character test centred his ‘association’ with his second cousins.

The evidence of the ‘association’ amounted to chatting via email to one of the men. The latest contact was on June 26 when Haneef and Sabeel Ahmed discussed the birth of Haneef’s daughter.

Mr Andrews noted that Haneef had been charged with having provided resources — a mobile phone SIM card — to a terrorist organisation, being reckless as to whether the organisation was a terrorist organisation. The documents showed Haneef had left the SIM card with one of his cousins in September 2006 when he flew from Britain to take up a position as a doctor at the Gold Coast Hospital. The cousin, according to Haneef, had wanted to use the ‘extra minute deal’ available with the SIM card, and promised to transfer it into his own name.

The SIM card was allegedly in the possession of Sabeel’s brother Kafeel as he drove a flaming jeep into Glasgow airport on June 30.

Haneef told federal police Kafeel had lent him 300 pounds in October 2005 to sit a medical exam.

Haneef and Sabeel Ahmed chatted occasionally online up until June 26, three days before the failed attacks in Britain, the documents said. On that occasion they discussed the birth of Dr Haneef’s daughter.

Mr Russo said offers of assistance for Haneef’s defence were flooding in from the legal community across Australia.

Mr Russo and several other lawyers and barristers spent yesterday preparing a challenge to Mr Andrews’ decision to revoke Haneef’s 457 visa and to place him in an immigration detention centre. The challenge is to be filed in the Federal Court today.

Mr Russo said he and Haneef’s other lawyers had not yet made a decision about posting bail — set at $10,000 — but it currently suited them not to do so because they wanted to retain easy access to Haneef. ‘If we post bail, he will be taken away to the custody of the Immigration Department, possibly in Villawood in Sydney,’ he said.

Mr Andrews told ABC radio that barring a successful challenge to the cancellation of his visa, Haneef would be expelled from Australia once his court case was over, regardless of the outcome.
The Age (Melbourne) July 17, 2007