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> Australia's Terror Prosecutions & the Courts
Australia's Terror Prosecutions & the Courts
[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 July 2007]
While Australian media highlighted that recent prosecutions by
Australia's law enforcement gave the "appearance of a political imperative to
obtain convictions and an excessive zeal for using harsh anti-terror laws,"
federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, suprised by the Melbourne court's
decision to bail two Tamil men charged with supplying funds to Sri Lanka's Tamil
Tigers, appeared to shift the blame towards the Courts saying, "bail laws for
people charged with terrorism offences could be reviewed if there is evidence
courts are misinterpreting them. If, on appeal, those decisions were upheld, the
government might well want to give the courts some further advice as to how
these issues ought to be addressed," Mr Ruddock told the press in Canberra,
reports said.
Victoria state Supreme Court Judge Bernard Bongiorno, releasing Aruran
Vinayagamoorthy, 33, and Sivarajah Yathavan, 36, on bail 17th July said that if
the "principle [normal presumption of innocence] is abandoned or even modified
for political expediency, that risks the whole foundation of our criminal
justice system."
Australian parliament website (see external link) charaterized charges on the
Tamil detainees as "first non-muslim related" charges.
A third Tamil accused, Arumugam Rajeevan, 41, arrested in Sydney
earlier this month, was also released on bail later on the same day by Chief
Magistrate Ian Gray in Melbourne Magistrates Court.
Meanwhile, recent terrorism case against Queensland doctor Mohamed Haneef
appears to be falling apart due to "embarrassing and highly damaging bungles by
police." Queensland Premier Peter Beattie described the case against the doctor
as "sloppy," and demanded explanations from the Howard Government in the
interests of natural justice, and to restore confidence in anti-terror laws,
papers said.
Dr Haneef, who was born in India, was charged with supporting a terrorist
organisation after giving a mobile phone SIM card to a relative later accused of
being involved in plotting car bomb attacks in Britain. It was later revealed
the SIM card he left in Britain was not used in the failed suicide bomb attack
on Glasgow airport as had been claimed.
Melbourne barrister Peter Faris QC who described the Haneef case as disastrous
and an "absolute disgrace", told The Weekend Australian it was beyond belief
that neither the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) nor the AFP [Australian
Federal Police] had retracted the evidence if they knew it to be false. "If
that's the case ... it shows monumental incompetence on the part of the
commonwealth DPP and they shouldn't be prosecuting this case -- they don't have
the competence."
Surveying the anti-terrorism cases prosecuted by the Crown, a report in The
Australian said that the result of of excessive zeal and appearance of political
imperative in persecutions "has been a succession of failed prosecutions, which
has undermined confidence in the integrity of the laws and the impartiality of
those whose job it is to implement them."
The laws were first used in December 2003 when a Sydney supermarket
shelf-stacker, Zeky "Zac" Mallah, a "troubled orphan who got mixed up with the
extremist Islamic Youth Movement" was charged with committing an act in
preparation for a terrorist attack. In March 2005 a jury acquitted Mallah on the
two terrorism charges. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of threatening to
kill commonwealth officers and served two years in jail, the report said.
Melbourne man Jack Thomas, was charged in November 2004 with two counts of
providing resources to a terrorist organisation - the same charge laid against
Haneef - along with one count of receiving funds from a terrorist organisation
and a further charge of possessing a falsified passport.
Thomas was tried in February 2006, the case against him relying almost entirely
on an interview recorded by the Australian Federal Police in Pakistan, in the
absence of a lawyer. The jury acquitted Thomas on the two main charges of
providing resources to a terrorist organisation but convicted him of a lesser
charge of receiving funds and using a falsified passport.
Twelve months later, Thomas's conviction was overturned after the Victorian
Court of Appeal found his record of interview in Pakistan had not been voluntary
and was unfair and contrary to public policy. Thomas is to face a new trial next
year, based on interviews he gave to the ABC's Four Corners and Melbourne
newspaper The Age, according to the report.
According to "The Australian" there has been only one successful prosecution
under the anti-terrorism laws: the conviction last year of Sydney architect
Faheem Khalid Lodhi, who was found guilty on three charges for plotting to blow
up the national electricity grid and military bases in Sydney. Lodhi is
appealing against his conviction in a case that will test the constitutional
legality of the anti-terrorism regime. His lawyers argue the National Security
Information Act, which has been invoked in several terrorism trials to protect
information deemed to be sensitive, is unlawful under the Constitution.
Despite streamlining the legislation, high-profile terrorism cases continue to
collapse over lack of evidence, "The Australian" said. In the past 14 months
Queensland police have twice bungled attempts to charge people under the laws,
the paper added.
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