17 July 07

Continued detention of Dr Haneef: an abuse of draconian laws for political agenda

The Social Justice Network condemns the Howard’s government abuse of power by canceling the working visa of Dr Haneef and placing him in detention centre, to avoid releasing him on bail. This is a clear denying of the principle of presumption of innocence until proven guilty in all civilized nations.

The Network regards the charges against Dr Haneef to be political to serve the election agenda for Howard government. The charges were laid even after Federal Police admitted lack of any evidence against the Indian - born doctor.

"The Howard government knew that, by releasing Dr Haneef, it will face huge embarrassment and possible massive compensation claims for misusing the draconian Anti-Terror laws" said Jamal Daoud, spokesperson for Social justice Network. "The Howard government preferred to lay charges in bid to delay the backlash until after the federal election expected later in the year. When the court granted him bail, the government resorted to the abuse of the Migration Act to keep him away from the community and the media

" We know that such trials are taking few years in the courts. We remember how long it took Mr Zak Mallah and Jack Thomas to prove their innocence.

The government learned that Dr Haneef would sue the government after his release for illegal detention and for damages to his career and on his mental status. The government wanted to delay such process until after the coming election.

The bungle showed how draconian is the Anti-Terror laws, introduced by the government between 2002 - 2004. Dr Haneef was arrested on no basis, with no evidence of criminal activities. The Anti Terrorism laws enabled the Federal Police to wrongly arrest the doctor. The Federal Police arrested the Indian doctor on suspicion only.

"The draconian Anti- Terror laws are ignoring the presumption of innocence of each citizen" said Mr Daoud "this takes us few centuries backward to Middle ages era"

The whole issue was abused from the first moment by the Howard government to try to score few political points that it is tough on "terrorism" and that it is very serious on protecting the Australian public. This reminds us of all previous attempts by this government to deceive Australians by false claims to spread fears in the community and secure re-election. This is clearly another attempt to repeat the “Tampa”, “kids overboard” and “Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction” lies.

There is growing evidence that using the draconian Anti-Terrorism laws did not help at all in combating terrorism or in making Australia safer. On the contrary, it further marginalised large section of the community, which could in turn play role in the radicalisation of community members. These laws should be scraped; Dr Haneef and all innocents arrested according to these laws should be released. These innocent people should be properly compensated.

For media interviews, you can call Jamal Daoud on 0424 163 667