By Neena Bhandari, IANS
Sydney : A prominent legal expert Friday called for the sacking of Police Commissioner Mick Keelty for his bungling in the case of Muhammad Haneef, clearly indicating that the saga of the Indian doctor charged with terrorism and then freed was not going to fade anytime soon — more so with polls less than a month away.
Former legal adviser to Prime Minister John Howard’s Liberal Party, Tony Morris, told The Australian newspaper that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) chief had been castigating Haneef’s lawyers in the media for disclosing the weaknesses in the prosecution case against the former Gold Coast hospital registrar.
Morris said: “Now he admits that he was conscious of those weaknesses all along, and stood by and did nothing when an inaccurate version of the facts was inadvertently presented to the court.
“On his own admission, as the chief law enforcement officer for the Commonwealth he was willing to allow a miscarriage of justice to proceed without taking any step to interfere — and then attacked Haneef’s lawyers for their efforts to prevent that miscarriage.”
Keelty had declined requests to explain his position and “should be sacked”, Morris added.
In a comment in the Bulletin magazine, Keelty said he believed the AFP made errors and was surprised when Haneef was charged with providing support to a terrorist organisation.
The 27-year-old doctor was imprisoned for three weeks in July after being charged with supporting a terror plot in Britain. The charges were later dropped and he returned to his family in Bangalore after Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews cancelled his visa. His legal team has appealed against the decision.
As the Haneef case dominated headlines during July and August, calls to the national security hotline soared to 2,611 in July, up from 1,399 in June. August saw an all time high of 3,430 calls to the hotline in the past two years.
Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said, “We know historically that calls to the hotline increase after a terrorist incident. It is as likely, as for any other reason, that the increase in calls reflects increased community vigilance following the failed car bombs in London and the attack on the Glasgow airport.”
Meanwhile, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which has all along demanded a full judicial enquiry into the failed Haneef case, has done a volte-face. Shadow Attorney General Joe Ludwig told the Sydney Morning Herald that if ALP was elected, it may not proceed with an inquiry.
Ludwig told the newspaper: “It is not about an inquiry for an inquiry’s sake. If we are elected, we would work through it with the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Immigration.
“At the moment, we don’t have access to information held by those agencies. We don’t have the full report from the DPP. We would need to assess it and work through it.”
Ludwig told newspaper that the Haneef affair had damaged public trust in anti-terrorism laws.