Fri Jul 27, 2007 7:18AM BST
CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australian authorities dropped terrorism charges against an Indian doctor, arrested in connection with a failed car bomb plot in Britain, Australia’s chief prosecutor Damian Bugg said on Friday.
Dr Mohamed Haneef, 27, had been charged with recklessly supporting terrorism by providing a relative in Britain with his mobile phone SIM card. He has been in jail since he was detained by police on July 2 as he was about to leave Australia for India.
Bugg intervened to review the evidence against Haneef after weeks of media leaks and growing public criticism about the lack of strong evidence against the doctor.
“On my view of this matter, a mistake has been made,” Bugg told reporters in Canberra.
Haneef, who did not enter a plea to the charges, has been held in jail despite a magistrate ruling he could be released on bail because of the weak police case, after intervention by the Australian government.
The government cancelled Haneef’s visa and ordered he be kept in immigration detention, declaring he did not pass a “character test” due to suspicion that he had associated with people involved in terrorism.
Haneef said he left his mobile phone SIM card with Sabeel in Liverpool in mid 2006, when Haneef left Britain to work in Australia.
Australian prosecutors told an Australian court that Haneef’s SIM card was found in the burning jeep in Glasgow, although police sources in Australia and Britain later changed their story and said the SIM card was found with Sabeel.
The case had put the Australian Federal Police (AFP) under extreme pressure, with one investigator dropping dead of natural causes during the investigation.
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AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty has said investigators had the equivalent of 36,000 filing cabinets of information to sort through in the Haneef case.
He now faces being deported to India when he is released from jail.
Police in Britain have charged three people over the failed June car bomb attacks, including Haneef’s second cousin Sabeel Ahmed, who is accused of failing to disclose information that could have prevented an attack.
Another of Haneef’s second cousins, Kafeel Ahmed, remains in hospital after being badly burned when a jeep was driven into an airport terminal in Glasgow and set ablaze.
