Prosecutors may have given an Australian court wrong information about a suspect's links to the failed terrorist attacks in Britain, and badly damaged their chances of a conviction, laywers said yesterday.
Government prosecutor Clive Porritt told a magistrate last week that a cellphone SIM card registered to Mohammed Haneef was found in a gas canister-loaded Jeep driven into an airport entranceway in Glasgow last month.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp reported yesterday that unnamed officials in Britain and Australia say the card was seized from a suspect in the British city of Liverpool hours after the failed attack in Glasgow, not in the vehicle.
Haneef's lawyer, Peter Russo, said he had not yet been able to confirm the mistake, but that it could help in his client's defense of the charge of giving support to a terrorist organization.
"It's one piece, it's an inconsistency," Russo told reporters. "Court cases aren't won on one inconsistency. ... I wouldn't say with any certainty that this is the ace in the pack, so to speak, but it's definitely something we need to explore."
Other lawyers not involved in the case said the mistake, if true, could end the chances of a conviction, and that police had further compounded the error by not correcting the public record.
"It's a shocking mess up," senior lawyer Peter Faris told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "A competent cross-examiner will cut the police to pieces. It may well be that the prosecution case will collapse."
"You can't get something that's so central so wrong," he said.
Australian Federal Police and government officials declined immediate comment on the report, which comes as a debate rages in Australia and India about whether authorities have been overzealous in prosecuting Haneef under counterterror and immigration laws.
Haneef, a 27-year-old doctor from India, moved to Australia from Britain last year to work. Authorities arrested him July 2 as he tried to leave Australia for India.
He was then charged two weeks later with supporting a terrorist organization for leaving the SIM card with Sabeel Ahmed last year.
Sabeel Ahmed has been charged in Britain with withholding information that could prevent an act of terrorism. His brother, Kafeel Ahmed, is believed to have set himself ablaze after crashing the Jeep into the Glasgow airport and remains in hospital with critical burns.
The charge against Haneef, who is a distant cousin of the Ahmed brothers, hinges on the SIM card, which Haneef told police he left with Sabeel Ahmed when he left Britain so his cousin could use its unused credit.
The ABC reported that the card was seized from Sabeel Ahmed in Liverpool eight hours after the Glasgow attack.
A magistrate granted Haneef bail on Monday, saying the evidence Porritt presented was not enough to keep him detained. However Haneef chose to stay in police custody after the federal government canceled his work visa and said he would be held by the immigration authorities if he posted bail.
Lex Lasry, a prominent rights lawyer, said the reported mistake about the location of the SIM card should prompt the government to review its decision to revoke Haneef's visa.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS