"Terrorists" or "freedom fighters?"

HERE in Australia some of us have decided to join Gordon Brown in the UK by not using the phrase “war on terror” any more. It is a small step, but it might be important. From now on “terrorists” will be identified more accurately “freedom fighters.”

The past fortnight has seen our useless media caught up in another hysterical episode as our Federal Police Force got their hands on a young India-born doctor, who left London last year to come and work in Australia. Before he left he handed over his SIM card to his cousin because it had unused  credit which would be no use to him in the far-away antipodes.

After a week of solitary incarceration, during which the police wrecked his home searching for evidence, and then several hours of intense questioning beginning at three o'clock in the morning  Dr Mohamed Haneef made a startling admission: He had not asked his cousin if he was a “terrorist” before handing over his phone card.

Haneef's cousin is one of the two freedom fighters who tried to blow up Glasgow Airport at the end of last month, in a failed  exercise that seems almost comical. The car they used, a Jeep Cherokee which they presumably had loaded with considerable explosive material, caught fire and was engulfed in flames yet even then failed to explode.

Now Haneef has been charged in Australia under Section 102.7 (2) of the Crimes Act of 1995. Clearly the evidence gained so far has been insufficient to charge him under the Anti-Terrorist Act of 2004, even though he was detained under that Act and held incommunicado for a week.

The charge reads that police allege that he  “provided support to a terrorist organisation by recklessly giving them a SIM card,” and the maximum penalty is fifteen years jail.

Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty told reporters that the specific allegation involved “recklessness” rather than “intention.” He said, "The allegation being that he was reckless about some of the support he provided to that group, in particular the provision of his SIM card for the use of the group."

As the tired, unshaven, manacled Haneef  appeared before the court, encased in a bullet-proof glass cage in clothes he had been wearing for a week, it was difficult not to feel some sympathy for him. He has a wife and new-born baby in India and had been allowed to talk to his wife on the telephone for just 60-seconds top tell her what has happened to him. In the meantime, his landlord is about to evict him and his possessions from his flat for unpaid rent.

In the meantime, the incident does nothing for thousands of patients around Australia awaiting treatment and surgery.  In its obsession with returning budget surpluses for the past eleven years, the Howard government has failed in its duty of care towards the people of this nation by failing to provide for the education of enough home-grown doctors to care for them.

The result has been a frantic campaign to recruit overseas doctors to come here to work under a special visa.  After this incident, I would have to advise them not to. You'd never know when or whether you'd be locked up as a freedom fighter, especially if you happened to be black.