AFP needed to be frank with the public: Beattie
Mr Beattie’s attack today is the latest in a war of words which also has seen the Federal Government accuse Haneef’s lawyers of undermining terror laws.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said some civil libertarians were prepared to say anything to achieve their ends.
Haneef was arrested by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on July 2 at Brisbane Airport while trying to leave on a one-way ticket to India.
He has been charged with supporting terrorism, but a series of leaks have damaged the credibility of the case against him.
Mr Beattie said today the AFP needed to be frank with the public.
“My only concern with all of this is to ensure that this is properly and adequately explained to the Australian people,” Mr Beattie told ABC radio.
“There are a number of inconsistencies. I was very annoyed yesterday to read a report … that suggested there may have been some possible photographs taken of a building on the Gold Coast, bearing in mind that I’d been telling Queenslanders that I was not aware, on the advice I was given, that there was any threat to any individual or property.
“These sort of leaks … to me are just crazy and unacceptable in a climate where everyone is working to defeat terrorism.”
“The level of cynicism which is developing here is going to continue, and then that undermines public confidence in the anti-terrorism laws.”
AFP commissioner Mick Keelty yesterday issued a statement saying there was no link between Haneef and a threat to the Gold Coast.
The Australian today reported that a transcript of Dr Haneef’s police interview revealed that police had mistakenly handwritten material in Dr Haneef’s diary.
Mr Ruddock today denied the case against Haneef is now “a mess”, saying some civil libertarians were prepared to say anything to achieve their ends.
The case against the Indian-born doctor has been plagued by a series of leaks of documents.
”These matters should not be dealt with in the way in which they have, either by leak or by counter-leak or whatever,” Mr Ruddock said today.
Asked on Southern Cross radio whether the case was a mess, he replied: ”No, what I think has happened is that people who have views about the nature of the law are determined to try and bring it into disrepute.
”That’s what I think is happening.”
Referring to an admission by Haneef’s barrister Stephen Keim SC that he had leaked a record of interview to the media, Mr Ruddock said: ”Equally I don’t believe the defence, as they did, should be putting records of interview into the public arena.
”I don’t think people in official positions should be putting information in the public arena that should go to a court.”
He said the legal profession had acted unethically in revealing the transcript of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) interview with Haneef.
”There are certainly some people in the legal profession, particularly those who come out of the civil liberties groups, who have a view anything goes, and you see that in the nature of the comments they make.”
Mr Ruddock also described as unhelpful the report suggesting the AFP had uncovered evidence Haneef had been planning to blow up a Gold Coast skyscraper.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer meanwhile has attacked Mr Beattie’s comments.
Mr Downer said the comments were a partisan broadside designed to hurt the AFP.
”Mr Beattie goes around and calls the federal police keystone cops, he is trying to undermine public support in the federal police for party political reasons,” Mr Downer told the Nine Network.
”I think we can do better than that as a society from our premiers.”
Mr Downer refused to comment on a report in The Australian newspaper today which says federal investigators wrote the names of suspected overseas terrorists in Haneef’s diary in an attempt to get him to admit to knowing people accused of involvement in a foiled bid to detonate car bombs in the UK.
”Let the court decide on these things. Let’s not have the media trying to hear the whole case before the court does.”
– AAP (July 23, 2007)
