Police tied in terrorism red tape

as posted here

The chairman of the Haneef inquiry, John Clarke, QC, told a Canberra conference this week that the case of the Indian doctor on the Gold Coast charged with a terrorism offence in 2007 was "not a debacle", as it had been portrayed.

Despite the popular conception that the Australian Federal Police behaved like Keystone cops, Clarke told ABC radio they did "quite well" in an emergency situation, applying new and complex terrorism legislation, with most of the evidence overseas, constant leaks and undoubted political pressure.

Clarke complained this week about lacking the power in his inquiry to investigate any political pressure that may have been applied. But he exonerated the police of wrongdoing. There were "significant and very bad mistakes" in the affair but the police were "very impressive, working hard and doing a good job".

The new terrorism legislation under which Mohamed Haneef was charged was "complex and difficult, even for a lawyer, and was being applied by police officers".

This was the "root of the early problems. [It's] not surprising there were mistakes … Neither the police nor the magistrates had any experience with it." It was an "extraordinary" emergency. "I think they did quite well in terms of that."

So there you have it.

Will anyone apologise to Mick Keelty, the recently retired AFP commissioner who bore the brunt of the criticism in the Haneef matter? Or to the chief investigator, Commander Ramzi Jabbour, then AFP's manager of domestic counter terrorism, who worked thankless hours from the moment he received a 4.50am phone call on July 2, 2007, from British authorities investigating terrorist incidents in London on June 29 - where two undetonated car bombs were found - and Glasgow airport on June 30, where there was a suicide car bomb attack?

The British police told him they had issued an arrest warrant for Haneef, a cousin of the Glasgow bomber, and wanted the AFP to find him urgently.

By 7.40am on July 2, Haneef's house was under surveillance.

But at 8.10pm Haneef was on his way to Brisbane airport with a one-way ticket to India - bought that day - where he later said he wanted to visit his wife and one-week-old daughter.

Jabbour and his superiors made the decision to detain Haneef before he boarded the plane to protect passengers. As it happened, no evidence was found against Haneef and all charges and investigations were dropped.

The Haneef affair cast a shadow over Keelty's successful reign at the AFP from April 2001 until his retirement three weeks ago.

While he is doing his best to slip quietly into obscurity, he told me last week: "I'm happy enough to cop the cuts over Haneef. But people forget we were at the beck and call of the Brits. It was their evidence …

"The advice I gave to the [Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions] at the time was I didn't think that there was enough evidence [to charge Haneef]. But I accepted the DPP decision …

"The expectations for not having a terrorist attack in this country are enormous … You have to do everything right."

And even then, it's not enough for some people. For instance, the "be alert but not alarmed" campaign to advertise the terrorism hotline was a subject of much mirth and derision among the chattering classes. Yet Keelty, 55, says it has been invaluable.

"Despite all the cynicism, I can confidently tell you there hasn't been a terrorism investigation that hasn't been reported to us on the hotline."

The hotline featured in the successful conviction last year of the Melbourne cleric Abdul Benbrika and six followers on terrorism charges.

"We have been successful with the ASIO and the state police in investigating the things we know," says Keelty. "I know people find it hard to understand but it is the things we don't know which are the ones to really worry about."

In Haneef's case there were a lot of unknowns, but in an era of terrorism, that is the area in which police are forced to work and it inevitably leads to mistakes.

Australian police suspected Haneef for various reasons, such as the fact his trip had been so hastily arranged, that he said he planned to return to Australia in a week when he had only a one-way ticket - which is almost twice as expensive as half-a-return ticket to India. His luggage contained original documents police felt were not necessary for a short visit to India.

An online conversation found on his laptop, discussing the British terrorist incidents with his brother, appeared suspicious. There was misinformation coming from the fluid British investigation.

Despite their suspicions, Jabbour and his team felt they did not have enough to charge Haneef. It was the DPP, reviewing the police brief under great time pressure, who decided they did.

"The AFP has … asserted that the [DPP] advice was 'the catalyst' for the decision to charge Haneef, and I accept that," wrote Clarke in his report.

Clarke described Jabbour as "an impressive, dedicated and capable police officer". Yet he was critical because Jabbour had "formed a strong opinion that Dr Haneef was implicated" and so was more "receptive" to the advice of the DPP that there was sufficient evidence to charge him over the provision of his SIM card to his cousin.

"It is my view that Jabbour had become suspicious about Dr Haneef and had lost objectivity."

The police can't win. When it comes to weighing the safety of the public versus the perhaps mistaken detention of a terrorism suspect it seems we don't want a seasoned police commander trusting his instincts, and erring on the side of caution.

It will be our own fault when we eventually get a police force of automatons, blocking every hunch with the dead hand of objectivity.

as posted here

Al-Qa'ida-linked mum refused visa

as posted here

ASIO has refused to renew the passport of Sydney mother Rabiah Hutchinson, based on a new security assessment that says she continues to support politically motivated violence and would be likely to engage in activity that might "prejudice the security of Australia or another country" if she were to travel abroad.

The ASIO assessment follows an application by Ms Hutchinson in March to have her travel document restored so she can visit family members overseas.

Rejecting the application by Ms Hutchinson, who has past links with al-Qa'ida and Jemaah Islamiah figures, the agency advised: "ASIO reporting indicates Hutchinson continues to adhere to a hardline interpretation of Islam and demonstrates a willingness and capability to radicalise individuals to undertake politically motivated violence and support Islamic extremist causes overseas."

The assessment noted Ms Hutchinson "has not been directly involved in violence in the past and is unlikely to be directly involved in the future".

However, it said if she were to travel "she will again gravitate towards extremist elements and revert to her previous role of facilitator and radicalising influence". It said she could also be involved in "providing financial or other support for violent jihadist organisations, facilitate fundraising or act as a courier".

Ms Hutchinson rejected the assertions that she has had a radicalising influence.

"Show me one place where I have done that. I don't have to. Anywhere I have been, the people believe exactly the same as me," she said.

Since returning to Australia from Iran in 2003, Ms Hutchinson said she rarely leaves her home as she is under constant surveillance. She said the suggestion of her providing "financial or other support" to terrorists was "ridiculous".

"What's the 'other support'? Working in hospitals and building wells? (They say) what I was doing in Afghanistan was 'politically motivated violence' -- taking care of orphans and working in hospitals was 'politically motivated violence'. And what do you mean 'financial support?'

"That al-Qa'ida needs a couple of hundred dollars from me every three or four years to sustain itself?"

Her passport was first cancelled in 2004 because of her links to Islamic extremists, including senior members of al-Qa'ida, Jemaah Islamiah and the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jemaah Association, a fundamentalist group led by Melbourne's Sheik Mohammed Omran.

Ms Hutchinson would not be drawn on whether she supports the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, saying she could be arrested for expressing her views. "You realise it's 25 years' jail now? To say you support the Afghans, it's part of support for terrorism."

She said the ASIO assessment showed the double standards of the West's "war on terror".

Ms Hutchinson is one of 43 Australians who have had their passports cancelled or denied on national security grounds since November 2001.

as posted here

India and Australia’s interests increasingly converging, says new envoy

as posted here

NEW DELHI - Australian High Commissioner to India Peter Varghese on Thursday said “Australia’s and India’s interests are increasingly converging and that Australia is committed to taking its relationship with India to the forefront of our bilateral partnerships.”


Speaking after presenting his credentials to President Pratibha Devisingh Patil, High Commissioner Varghese noted the strong people-to-people links between Australia and India.

“Over 200,000 people of Indian origin have made Australia their home. They live peacefully and harmoniously with migrant communities from different parts of the world,” he said.

“Australia also looks to work constructively with India on a range of multilateral issues including the G20, climate change and the Doha Round,” he added.

Varghese took up his position as Australian High Commissioner to India in August 2009.
Prior to his posting he was for five and half years the Director General of the Office of National Assessments (ONA) in Canberra. This is a Secretary-level statutory office reporting directly to the Australian Prime Minister. ONA provides the Prime Minister and the National Security Committee of Cabinet with assessments of international political, strategic and economic developments affecting Australia’s national interests. It is also responsible for coordinating and evaluating Australia’s foreign intelligence activities.

From June to December 2003, Varghese worked in the Prime Minister’s personal office as the senior foreign and defence policy adviser to then Prime Minister John Howard.

Varghese is a career officer of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which he joined in 1979. He has served in Vienna (1980-83), Washington (1985-88), as Minister (Political) in Tokyo (1994) and as High Commissioner to Malaysia (2000-2002).

In Canberra, Varghese has held a wide range of positions, including Deputy Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs (2003) and several stints working on disarmament and arms control issues. In 1996 and 1997 he led the drafting team which produced Australia’s first ever White Paper on foreign affairs and trade. Varghese also headed the department’s personnel branch (1991-2). From 1998-99 he was seconded to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as head of the international division.

Varghese was born in Kenya in 1956 to Kerala-born parents who went to teach in Kenya soon after they married. He migrated to Australia as a young child. Varghese went to school in Brisbane and is a graduate and university medallist in history from the University of Queensland. He is married to Margaret, who is on leave from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. They have one son. (ANI)


as posted here

Petrov’s Skoda – realpolitix or mythica?

as posted here

As the story unfolds, so the plot thickens. As it should in any melodrama.


[more images available on the original posting]

The “real story” of Petrov’s accident on the Cooma road at dawn on Christmas Eve, 1953, is a truly unlikely tale according to the myriad of sources available to your iconophiliac. The police records, ASIO records, the numerous subsequent publications, plus the memories of local residents, are the very stuff of myth. On 23rd April 1954 the Canberra Times rewrote the events of Christamas Eve as a “murder attempt” – probably the source of the mythology that persists in the public memory to this day. Apart from the fact that it was the Christmas holidays, and that most of the police and ASIO officials were on leave when the accident occurred, the “official” accounts of what actually caused the accident, and what happened to Petrov subsequently, are as various as they are entertaining.

Frank Cain, in his ASIO: An Unofficial History (1994) gives a rollicking account of Petrov as a rather incompetent Walter Mittyesque figure, who was lured into in whisky smuggling and bawdy incidents in Kings Cross by ASIO counter-agents. On the story of the accident, Cain relates that Petrov was driving south “on a secret assignation” with a Madame Ollier, of the French Embassy. And that after the crash, battered and bruised, he left the car, hitched a lift to Cooma, and caught the train back to Canberra. No evidence of the truck which is said to have run him off the road was ever found. But on the evidence of the Royal Commission which followed his defection, Cain concludes that he was unlikely to have been a spy-master of any kind. The Royal Commission on Espionage, it is widely recognised, was as influential in Menzies’ re-election and Evatt’s political downfall as the visit of Her Royal Majesty in February and March 1954. Realpolitics in action.

...

In The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage (1987) Robert Manne wrote that Petrov knew he had been lucky to escape with his life. “He claimed he had been forced off the road by a truck, and not unnaturally given his present state of mind, wondered whether his Soviet colleagues were behind some attempt on his life. Inside the Soviet embassy he received little sympathy. Petrov had never renewed the insurance policy on the Skoda. Generalov demanded he pay for a replacement with his own money. When he eventually emerged from the Soviet embassy to speak to the Canberra police about the accident, he misled them on a number of points, at least partly because he wished to conceal from the the purpose of his trip to Cooma – a conspiratorial rendezvous with Madame Ollier of the French embassy. Only an unusually heavy evening in Sydney… to bring in the New Year could temporarily mask his growing despair.”

So where did the wreck of Petrov’s Skoda end up? John Goodall, who lives just downhill from the site in the old Royalla Post Office and phone exchange, which was run by his grandmother Gladys (”Gladdie”) Burke (nee Goodall) at the time of the accident, is the only person we met who knew anything about the event. From his house about a kilometer away, he pointed to the location on the hillside where he remembers the wreck of the Skoda had been laid to rest. Where is it now? According to John, it was brutally “buried by redneck road builders” when the road was moved 100m to the west in 1991. So there you are. On John’s authority, ever since 1991 you have passed over the ghost of Petrov’s Skoda as you headed south for the snow. By the time you caught sight of the tin cowboy, you were over it, literally…

For those who want to know more – we’re still searching for the pre-1991 aerial surveys – the GPS reference for the location of the buried Skoda is [Aus Geo 1984] 55K 0694889 6068431. And yes, the evidence needs further triangulation, but who wants to ruin a good fringe-urban myth? The FJ Holden which now serves as the symbolic “Petrov’s car” is to be found at [Aus Geo 1984] 0694700 6068433. Or see our Google Map here (with thanks to my collaborators-in-procrastination Annie Jay and Pammy Faye, for most of these arcane details).

Question for Ralph Nader: is it possible to roll a Skoda at 25 mph?

as posted here