Tuesday 26th of November 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

fire the crook .....

fire the crook .....

from Crikey ….. 

AFP keeps Haneef cards close to its chest 

Greg Barns writes: 

It is not often that a Police Commissioner is as rude to his political masters as the AFP’s Mick Keelty was last week to Attorney-General Robert McClelland. Mr McClelland, obviously bemused at the fact that Australia’s most secretive organisation, ASIO, is able to make publicly available its submission to the Haneef Inquiry (whereas as the supposedly more transparent AFP has not), told Mr Keelty he might like to rethink his position. Take a flying leap, was the gist of Mr Keelty’s reply. 

The AFP has been telling the man heading the Haneef Inquiry, John Clarke, that it cannot make its submission publicly available because the UK Metropolitan Police Service and Crown Prosecution Service of the United Kingdom, have "objected to a significant proportion of the documents held by the Australian Federal Police, containing United Kingdom sourced and derived material, being provided to the Inquiry except under severely restricted conditions. Such was the concern of those authorities, who are anxious to protect the integrity of the criminal trials which are about to commence in the United Kingdom, that they declined to permit the Australian Federal Police to authorise the publication of any of those documents by the Inquiry," Mr Clarke’s July 25 statement said. 

Hang on, what trials? The only connection Dr Haneef had with the UK was that he gave his SIM Card to his cousin Sabeel Ahmed when he was about to leave the UK in 2006 to return to India. Sabeel’s brother Kafeel was involved in unsuccessful terror attacks in London and Glasgow in June last year, driving a Jeep Cherokee into the doors of Glasgow airport and setting himself alight. Kafeel later died from burns to 90% of his body, and Sabeel was charged and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment in April this year for refusing to disclose information about the Glasgow attack and another failed attack in London, and a month later deported to India. 

As sources close to the Haneef matter told Crikey, "the only connector between Dr. Haneef and the Metropolitan Police Service is the SIM card which Dr. Haneef gave to Sabeel who has been proven not to have had anything to do with the events in London and Glasgow. Metropolitan Police Service knows that. They sent someone out to liaise but she never asked to see Dr. Haneef. The Metropolitan Police Service told the world pretty quickly that they didn’t want to extradite Dr. Haneef," they said.  

So what are these documents held by the AFP that their UK counterparts want kept under lock and key? Surely, the public is entitled to know at least the nature of this documentation, even if the substance is not publicly revealed. 

And what do the AFP and their UK counterparts mean by the statement that the integrity of criminal trials needs to be protected? Is it seriously being suggested that the public release of material in Australia will impact on criminal trials in London? 

And speaking of the UK, what was the role of the AFP’s London office in the Haneef matter? There is speculation that the London office told AFP HQ in Canberra prior to Dr Haneef’s arrest in July last year that there was no evidence against him and he should not be arrested. If this was the case, once again the public is surely entitled to know.

circus of fools .....

from Crikey 

Our AFP and the total Haneef cock-up ….. 

Greg Barns writes: 

The Australian Federal Police officers who attended former Gold Coast doctor Mohammed Haneef’s bail hearing on Saturday July 14 last year in Brisbane had no knowledge of the case, according to the submission lodged yesterday by the Commonwealth DPP with the Clarke Inquiry.  

And, according to the DPP’s 50 page submission, despite the fact that the AFP had been investigating and interviewing Dr Haneef for 12 days prior to the bail hearing before Brisbane magistrate Jacqui Payne, the brief of evidence presented to the DPP’s lawyers by the AFP was "scant" and contained serious errors of fact.  

Mohammed Haneef had been arrested at Brisbane airport on the evening of July 2 last year and was held in custody for 12 days by AFP officers and the Queensland Police. 

Suspected of having provided a SIM card to his cousin Sabeel Ahmed who was involved in botched terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow on June 29 and June 30, Dr Haneef was interrogated by AFP officers and his alleged links to the UK bombings investigated over the course of the next ten days.  

But none of the officers who have been involved in the investigation or records of interview conducted with Dr Haneef attended the bail hearing at the Brisbane Magistrates Court on July 14, according to the DPP submission. 

The submission notes that two AFP officers attended the bail hearing on July 14. They gave the DPP’s lawyers four brief documents including an objection to bail affidavit. The documents, according to the DPP submission, contained very limited factual material in relation to Dr Haneef’s alleged involvement and did not include a summary of the evidence that was expected to be available from overseas. 

The second record of interview with Dr Haneef, which took place, on July 13, was also not given by the AFP officers to the DPP for the bail hearing. Nor was the charge sheet available to the DPP’s lawyers.  

But these weren’t the only problems the DPP had at the July 14 bail hearing. The AFP officer who was responsible for laying the charge was not in court and the two AFP officers who attended the hearing were from Sydney "and had no knowledge of the matter." 

During the July 14 bail hearing, the DPP’s lawyers made two incorrect statements. They alleged that the SIM card had been found at the scene of the Glasgow bombing, and that Dr Haneef had "resided with persons of interest in relation to the London bombing." The DPP officers on the case found out the first statement was wrong when they read media reports some eight days later, and the second around the same time.  

The conduct of the AFP and the DPP in the July 14 bail hearing is extraordinary. The standard and time honoured practice in bail hearings in our courts is for the officers who are working on the case, including the charging officer, to attend the hearing so they can instruct the prosecution lawyers. 

Why didn’t the DPP’s lawyers refuse to go into court until the appropriate officers were in court? They should have and if they had done so, they may not have been embarrassed by the two serious misstatements that they made to the court on that day.  

The DPP officer in the Brisbane office who worked with the AFP on the Haneef matter says that it was a "fraught and stressful time" and that he felt a sense of "unspoken but extreme pressure" from the AFP.  

That is probably right, but why didn’t his superiors in the DPP draw a line in the sand at that point? Why didn’t they stand up to the AFP and tell them that would not stand for being put under duress in the exercise of their duties and obligations?  

Mohammed Haneef has been the victim of some seriously second rate work by our justice system.  

Listen here for 3AW's interview with Mohammed Haneef's lawyer, Maurice Blackburn this morning.

confidence tricks .....

Ms Annette Willing,                                                                

A/g Assistant Secretary,                                                        

Security Law Branch,

Attorney-General’s Department,National Circuit,

BARTON.  ACT.  2600.                                                           

Dear Ms Willing, 

Thank you for your letter of September 19, 2008, regarding the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Mr Mick Keelty. 

I note your assertion that the Government & the Attorney-General have “full confidence” in Commissioner Keelty, which can only cause any concerned citizen to have equally serious doubts about their competence or integrity. 

Mr Keelty has consistently demonstrated that he is not fit to hold the position of Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police. Indeed, his ineptitude & incompetence is legendary, with the following being only a few examples of his failings or of those for which he is responsible: 

*           deliberately leaking information & misinformation to the media;

*           arguing that legal proceedings taking place in an open court should not be reported by the media;

*           attacking a member of the legal profession for fulfilling his duty to his client & the public interest whilst, at the same time, deliberating misleading the public;

*           seeking to act beyond his sworn duty to uphold the law;

*           publishing inaccurate & dishonest media releases;

*           in the specific case of Dr Mohammed Haneef:

*           concealing transcripts of interviews;

*           ignoring Dr Haneef's lawful request for legal representation; 

*           providing deliberately false assurances; 

*           submitting false affidavits of evidence; &

*           deliberately misleading the media & the Australian public. 

That the Prime Minister, prior to the last election, was sufficiently concerned about the circumstances surrounding the arrest, detention, charging, prosecution & release of Dr Haneef, including the role of Commissioner Keelty & the Australian Federal Police, that he promised the Australian public that his government would mount a full public inquiry into the affair, must surely make a mockery of their claim to have “full confidence” in Commissioner Keelty. Or was the promise of such an inquiry nothing more than a cynical political stunt?  

Perhaps the fact that the Clarke Inquiry lacks the powers of a Royal Commission; is not open & public as promised & that the government & the Attorney-General have expressed “full confidence” in Mr Keelty, even before that Inquiry is complete, is prima facie evidence of that? 

Sincerely, 

John Richardson. 

CC:      The Hon Kevin Rudd, MP

            The Hon Dr Mike Kelly, MP