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.
It was clearly NO mistake that the AFP investigating officers were not in court for the bail hearing. This was NOT incompetence. It was most-likely a calculated decision by experienced officers that they could not properly attend court and assist a flawed DDP bail-objection and hoping that the prejudice of their allegations and the fact that there was no officer present who could answer the hard questions would be enough to get the DDP over the line.
The AFP MUST BE ASKED why the investigating officers were not present at the bail hearing and where they were at the time.
The AFP should be completely disbanded and a new force created. Certainly the tainted Keelty should be put out to pasture. All this bunch do is engage in well-publicised child pron busts or drug hauls and even then, the info probably comes from abroad. And they walk hand in hand with utterley corrupt Asian police forces. Boot the lot out.
I know this will come as a surprise to the usual hair trigger hot-heads such as Michael, Mark, Zane and of course the predictable Kevin but this matter is the subject of a judicial inquiry.
Until that has finished and reports sent to McClelland the government should quite rightly say and do nothing.
And on that very topic, JamesK:
“The problem with the Clarke inquiry is that it is not a “judicial inquiry”, a court of law or, more relevantly, a royal commission. Rather, it is an informal inquiry without the powers of a royal commission to procure files, compel witnesses to attend and give evidence and, most importantly, it has no ability to afford protection to witnesses for the evidence they may provide.
Nor, as an informal inquiry, and not a court of law, does the inquiry offer any right of appeal from its conclusions.
The Federal Government has maintained that a royal commission would be too expensive and take too long. There are many precedents for royal commissions meeting deadlines and being cost-effective.
Also, the Attorney-General has suggested that royal commission powers of investigation were not needed as all relevant agencies and key witnesses concerned have indicated a willingness to assist the inquiry.
While no one doubts the abilities of Clarke, it is not known whether his inquiry, without royal commission powers of investigation, will be able to gain all the files from relevant agencies and to ensure all witnesses come forward.
Experience suggests that when reputations, careers and organisational interests are at stake, voluntary co-operation quickly declines.
Persistent use of the term “judicial inquiry” may just reflect a lack of appreciation of this matter.”
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7333&page=0
To all those wondering when the new Government will do something about this, I can only say take your collective hands off it. The Government will prioritise the NEED to be SEEN TO BE tough on terror ahead of defending the clearly innocent Dr Haneef because it’s paranoid about what the Libs will say about this. They’ll also back the AFP on the basis that they have to live with them, and considering as they haven’t yet sacked Keelty, it’s safe to say they won’t do this (at least because of Haneef anyway). Forget justice, forget what’s right, just remember we’re dealing with policy made by jumpy media flacks.