War on Error

War on Error: Dr Haneef and the Keystone Cops

By: Katherine Wilson

Wednesday 1 August 2007

According to statements in the Law Council of Australia’s latest report, the ‘Kafkaesque’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ case against Dr Mohamed Haneef rivals the ‘farce’ of David Hicks’s trial under the US military commissions.

But the Hicks and Haneef cases aren’t the first instances of what appears to be selective leaking, spin doctoring, police bungling and abuse of Executive power in Australian terror trials.

In 2005, on the morning Australia’s radical WorkChoices legislation was introduced into Federal Parliament, nine Muslim men were arrested in Melbourne, coinciding with arrests of seven Muslim men in Sydney.

Thanks to Fiona Katauskas

Although Magistrate Reg Marron later said there was little evidence to connect the Melbourne and Sydney groups, police and politicians in both cities announced an ‘imminent terrorist attack’ had been thwarted thanks to new terror law amendments. These had been hastily sewn up a few days earlier, when it was announced by the Prime Minister on 2 November 2005 that: