Friday, July 27, 2007

Cool Heads and Terrorism Investigations: It Could be Worse

Dr. Mohamed Haneef is off the hook, sort of. He's the doctor charged by Australian authorities with reckless support to a terrorist organization. That's pretty serious. If he'd been convicted, he could have been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Here's what he's supposed to have done:
  • Let a second cousin use his SIM card
  • Owning that SIM card when it got left in a jeep on the other side of the world
  • Still being the SIM card owner when someone tried to use the jeep to torch an airport terminal
Sounds pretty trivial, put that way.

Dr. Haneef was freed today, after an Australian chief prosecutor said it was a mistake, charging him with being connected to the London/Glasgow car bombings in Britain.

The decision to release came after a review of the evidence by Australian Director of Public Prosecutions Bugg. After this review, Mr. Bugg found that his office should never have recommended charging Dr. Haneef. There's more at "Australia Drops Terror Charges Against Indian Doctor Accused in Failed U.K. Bombings Plot."

Mohamed Haneef isn't quite out of trouble yet.

This week's SNAFU is about Dr. Haneef's visa. It's been revoked. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, back when Dr. Haneef was an escaping fugitive (who had called the police to let them know he was leaving the country), revoked Dr. Haneef's visa. Now the Immigration Minister is pondering whether or not to change his mind.

Dr. Haneef has what I'd call a pretty good reason for wanting to leave Australia. His wife had a baby by C-section, and he wanted to be with her and their baby.

Ironically, 11 years ago today, a bomb went off at Atlanta's Olympic Park, the start of a really unpleasant part of Richard Jewell's life.

I hope that Dr. Haneef gets the right to get on with his life faster than Mr. Jewell did.

Posts on this topic:Information from FOXNews.com, "Australia Drops Terror Charges Against Indian Doctor Accused in Failed U.K. Bombings Plot
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1 comment:

Ottavio (Otto) Marasco said...

It's all over the papers this morning, Government officals blaming the prosecutors and vice versa. The tragedy of the Haneef case is that politics now envelop everything to do with Australia's national security apparatus especially in this, an election year in Australia.

July 28, 2007 at 3:00 AM

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.