A two-day extension granted to Australian police to hold a suspect in the London and Scotland terror plot may not be enough time to sift through a mountain of potential evidence, officials said yesterday.
Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said investigators may again invoke counterterrorism laws and ask a magistrate for permission to detain Muhammad Haneef longer, as they cross-check information gathered in a series of raids across Australia with evidence from Britain.
Haneef, a 27-year-old Indian who came to Australia from Britain last year, has been in custody without charge since July 2 when he was arrested as he tried to leave Australia for India with a one-way ticket.
His lawyer, Peter Russo, said his client was being denied natural justice and demanded he be charged or released.
A magistrate on Monday granted police two more days to hold Haneef while they conducted their investigation, but turned down their request for five days.
"We asked for a period of time that we thought was reasonable in terms of the amount of work that we envisaged needs to be done before we can be in a position to decide one way or the other about Dr Haneef's fate," Keelty told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio yesterday.
"If it's required ... we'll go back to the magistrate" and ask for more time, he said.
Up to 230 federal and state police have been involved in the investigation in Australia, which has included a number of raids on Haneef's apartment in Queensland state, two hospitals in Western Australia state and interviews in three states, Keelty said.
He said it was one of the largest counterterrorism probes in Australia, and complex because of the large amount of potential evidence in Australia and Britain, and the difference in time zones.
Attorney General Philip Ruddock said the investigation must be thorough.
"Something in the order of 120 gigabytes of computer data is being examined -- that's the equivalent of 31,000 single page documents. It's one of the reasons the matter takes so long," he said.
Police are checking financial, mobile phone and other records for possible links between Haneef and the plot in which two car bombs were found on June 29 in London and a vehicle attack on the international airport in Glasgow, Scotland, the following day.
An Australian federal police agent has gone to India to continue the investigation, a spokeswoman for the Australian Federal Police said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with policy.
Haneef's family in India says he is related to at least one of the seven suspects being held in Britain, but that he is innocent. Haneef was rushing to leave Australia to join his wife who recently had a baby in India, they said.
Keelty said the large amount of information gathered did not mean Haneef was guilty.
"We have to ... discern whether what we have here is evidence or information," he said. "There's a big difference between the two."
Russo said the law under which Haneef is being held is unfair.
"I don't think that there's any balance been built into it," Russo told reporters. "It impacts on a person's whole livelihood. Say, for example, a person is detained for a month. What happens to their job?"
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