from Four Corners
program transcript "The Trials of Dr Haneef"
Reporter: Liz Jackson
Date: 01/10/2007
(I'm guessing that there would be 9 hours difference between UK and Qld in northern winter.)
a) Dr Haneef had been working at the Gold Coast Hospital on a temporary skilled workers visa, since September last year 2006
b) about 9 months later, Tues 25 June or Wed, Haneef's wife back in India has a baby, he finds out, after a few days, that there are some concerns - but he doesn't ask for leave yet..
MOHAMED HANEEF: My wife had delivered a baby just four or five days ago and the baby had some complications as well. She had jaundice earlier in this and I was getting worried about the baby when the baby got sick. So I mean, I always had a plan to come back. That was it.
c) 3.10pm Saty 30 June (just after midnight early Sunday morning Qld/ Gold Coast) - a burning jeep Cherokee packed with explosive material slammed into the airport terminal building in Glasgow, Scotland,
It was then engulfed in flames. Two men emerged. One was a British born doctor of Iraqi descent, the other was an Indian engineer, who doused himself in petrol, and set himself alight. ...Kafeel Ahmed and that UK police believe he was also involved in the car bombs defused in the centre of London, just the day before. (he later dies of his burns).
d) 10pm Saty UK (about Sunday 7am GC) Seven hours later, his younger brother, Sabeel Ahmed, was arrested in Liverpool, on suspicion that he had knowledge of the terrorist plot. -Found to have a SIM card that once belonged to Haneef. It still had credit - Haneef had given it to him, and had asked him to change it over, bu that was only partly done , i.e. it was recorded that the bills were to be paid by Sabeel Ahmed etc.
The Ahmed brothers were second cousins of Dr Mohamed Haneef.
e) British police (Tony Wenster) contacts Sabeel Ahmed's mother in UK. She in turn rings Haneef to say that the Police has found his SIM card on Sabeel Ahmed and he has been arrested. & that Haneef is to ring back Webster to clarify the SIM card. She doesn't mention any alleged link to Glascow etc, she cannot clarify any questions in Haneef's mind about why they want to talk to him about a SIM card "I... It didn’t blow up in my mind about all these incidents in Glasgow and things at that time"
f) [around this time there is some chat room activity with his rels - see para s) below]
g) 5am Monday, Brisbane, AFP police receive advice from UK “that a mobile telephone subscribed in the name of Dr Mohamed Haneef was linked to the terrorist attacks that occurred in London and Glasgow.”
h) Monday morning. Haneef applies for a short spell of leave to return to India.
i) Monday afternoon (2nd July) Haneef’s phone log says that he tried to ring UK police at 3:08, 3:29 and 4:32pm, Brisbane time, but the calls were unsuccessful. (6.00am 6.30am and 7.30am UK time. Monday morning) .
[strange they weren't answered when you think about it ?? - maybe the AFP had told em they were tracking him? no need to talk to him by phone etc - still it leaves Haneef confused]
j) [presumably about 5 hours later? 9.30pm?], Haneef arrives at airport by airport bus from Gold Coast to catch an 11.45pm flight to India - goes through Immigration and Customs, and was waiting for the my flight to arrive. Detective showed his identity ... placed under arrest for supporting terrorism, they said.
k) Dr Haneef was taken to AFP headquarters .... I had a good night’s sleep. Then in the morning they started the interviews again.
L)11.00am to 5.30pm on Tues 3rd Juy Detective Sergeant Adam Simms (Joint Counter Terrorism Team in Brisbane) and others interview Mohamed Haneef. - he is asked 1615 questions. He was asked if he wanted a lawyer and declined.
"my personal details and they also indulged a look into my financial aspects into.. of my transferring of monies, of my transactions. They were interested in my stay in UK as well as elsewhere since my since my graduation and where else I’d been working - my work history, what are my beliefs…
LIZ JACKSON: Dr Haneef told the police he was born in Mudigere, a town about 300 kilometres from Bangalore, and where he went to school. His father was a teacher and died when Haneef was 18-years-old. He and his family moved to Bangalore when he won a scholarship to medical college.
He graduated in 2002. In 2004 an Islamic charity leant him money to pursue his studies working as a doctor in the United Kingdom.
He had just one relative there at the time, his second cousin Kafeel Ahmed, a post-graduate engineering student, the man who drove the burning car into Glasgow airport. The police were interested in Kafeel Ahmed.
LIZ JACKSON: Why the one way ticket? Dr Haneef said that his father-in-law had booked the ticket for him, because Haneef was short of money.
MOHAMED HANEEF: I didn’t really specify him to book it a two way ticket or a one way ticket to me. I didn’t have money at that time. I said, I mean, I come and book the I thought... I come and book the return ticket anyway. There’s always uncertainty about a day or two when we... when I come back to Australia because it was a short period of leave which I had. So, it all happened in circumstances and they had taken it in the wrong sense.
LIZ JACKSON: You were asked if you wanted a lawyer and you declined. Why was that?
MOHAMED HANEEF: Well, I thought... I mean, I had nothing to hide that I I was just answering whatever questions they wanted me to ask. Whenever they finish my interview then they will let me go and there was nothing from my side as such.
LIZ JACKSON: At the end of the interview they didn’t let you go?
..... They wanted to check my laptop and other things. They wanted to clarify a few other things, so they said they would keep me in detention for two days - 48 hours. Well I agreed for that, and I believed in them.
LIZ JACKSON: Dr Haneef was placed in a cell in the Brisbane watch house, unaware that he was the first person in Australia to be detained under the 2004 anti-terrorist amendments.
Under the new detention powers there was potentially no time limit on how long Haneef could be held in custody, without being questioned, and before being charged as long as police applied to a magistrate to approve the extended detention.
m) 5 July Thursday afternoon
Three days in they told Haneef they wanted more time...... another five days. I mean that seemed a bit fishy for me and what was happening.
Then I thought I would need some legal assistance in this.
LIZ JACKSON: So late afternoon, the 5th July, the police at watch house got a lawyer for Dr Haneef.PETER RUSSO.
n) 5 July Thursday evening
LIZ JACKSON: Later that evening there was a brief hearing before Magistrate Jim Gordon, the same magistrate who’d approved Haneef’s first period of detention…
Peter Russo, his lawyer, was asked to leave the room while police presented confidential material to the magistrate.
Russo was invited back in to be told by the magistrate the order would be made, as the police sought, giving them another four days based on material that neither he nor his client had seen.
PETER RUSSO: This sort of situation where secret material was being given to a magistrate to make decisions about someone’s liberty didn’t sit too well with me.
LIZ JACKSON: Because?
PETER RUSSO: Well that’s not the way the system works normally in... I knew that there was legislation that allowed this to happen.
LIZ JACKSON: But that was the first time you’d encountered it?
PETER RUSSO: But that’s the first time that I’d seen it actually in action.
LIZ JACKSON: Police now had over 200 officers looking for evidence against Haneef, sifting through whatever they could find in bags from material taken from his apartment, his books, his papers, his phone records, all his financial transactions, and thousands of pages of material downloaded from the computer