Peace prize winner in bid to save sheikh

as posted here ... Peace prize winner in bid to save sheikh

THE Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu is among international human rights leaders who have condemned Australia for its impending deportation of a Muslim cleric, whose battle will draw 1000 protesters to Canberra in a convoy of buses tomorrow.

"In South Africa we used to have detention without trial," says Bishop Tutu. "In Australia you have deportation without trial.”

The anti-apartheid hero and former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town has joined the campaign for the Iranian preacher Sheikh Mansour Leghaei, who will be forced to leave Australia on June 27 after the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, refused to overrule two adverse security assessments by ASIO.

Dr Leghaei has raised his family in Sydney for the past 16 years but the intelligence organisation suspects him of acts of foreign interference, although it has never told him what they are and – as the High Court has ruled – it has no obligation to do so.

More than 700 protesters on 11 buses from Sydney, and another 300 people expected from Melbourne and Canberra, will march on Parliament House tomorrow to deliver an appeal to the Prime Minister that Australia is in breach of its United Nations-sanctioned obligations.

But Senator Evans is unmoved. His spokeswoman said yesterday that his decision followed careful consideration and: "We expect Dr Leghaei to meet his commitment to leave Australia on [June 27]."

Today, the retired Anglican bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, George Browning, will be among speakers supporting Dr Leghaei, who leads an Islamic centre at Earlwood but has also chaired an inter-faith committee.

Bishop Tutu's message is among those of international supporters posted yesterday on savethesheikh.com. Another Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Máiread Corrigan-Maguire from Northern Ireland, writes that the deportation would breach the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a party. The UN's Human Rights Committee has asked Australia not to deport Dr Leghaei while it considers his case.

Hans Köchler, an Austrian philosophy professor and president of the International Progress Organisation, writes: "There can be no fair hearing of the case if the authorities refuse to disclose the allegations against Sheikh Mansour."

Dr Leghaei says he has only a few hints as to why ASIO might suspect him. When he returned from a visit to Iran in 1995, his luggage contained $10,000 – a donation from the Islamic Propagation Organisation, a publisher of Islamic texts in Tehran, to an Islamic centre in Melbourne.

Also in his luggage was an exercise book containing his student notes, in which he had quoted scholars on the subject of jihad. It was not until 2002, when he launched legal action against ASIO, that Dr Leghaei learned authorities had secretly copied these notes and, he claims, obtained a false translation which added inflammatory material about the killing of infidels. ASIO later accepted its translation was flawed and paid Dr Leghaei's costs.

Senator Evans's spokeswoman said: "For more than a decade, Dr Leghaei has accessed the Australian judicial system and has been afforded multiple appeals to a range of bodies, including the Immigration Review Tribunal, the Migration Review Tribunal, the Federal Court, the Full Federal Court and the High Court."

Ben Saul, co-director of the University of Sydney's centre for international law and one of the human rights barristers who went to the UN for Dr Leghaei, says they wrote to ASIO, suggesting it encourage the government to follow its international obligations.

A response arrived yesterday from the Australian Government Solicitor. It said: "ASIO's function is to advise the government in relation to matters of national security. It is not ASIO's function to advise the government in relation to matters of international law."

Dr Saul says they also wrote to the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, but got no reply. In 1997, as an opposition MP, Mr McClelland wrote a letter in support of Dr Leghaei, describing him as an asset to the Australian community. The minister's office has said Mr McClelland was not privy, at that time, to the content of the security assessments.