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Lessons from the Haneef episode

Mohammad Haneef, yanked off a July 2 flight to India and charged by the Australian police with abetting the Glasgow terror attack, has returned home to Bangalore — nearly vindicated and to a glorious welcome. I use the word “nearly” advisedly because the Australian counter-terrorism machinery is not done with him yet. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner, Mick Keelty, has vowed to track down “every lead and every piece of evidence” against the Indian doctor, who was released on July 27 after the case against him collapsed in a Brisbane court. Mr. Keelty, who was shown up during the investigation as at once staggeringly inept and deeply prejudiced, has added a chilling post-script to the warning: “the investigation has just started.”

Mr. Keelty’s is not an empty boast. The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, stand rock-like behind the rampaging police chief. Mr. Andrews has refused to reconsider the cancellation of Dr. Haneef’s visa, threatening instead to get to the “bottom of this [case against the doctor].” Since Dr. Haneef’s release there has hardly been a day when the Minister did not seek to bring new charges against the Indian doctor. Among other things, he has cited a non-existent Indian dossier to prove Dr. Haneef’s Al-Qaeda connection and released records of an allegedly incriminating chat room conversation between the doctor and his brother.

The Haneef case holds huge lessons for us in India. In many ways it is a typical Indian story. A terror suspect held interminably in prison, a police-prosecution combine, armed with an extraordinary anti-terrorism law, concocting an entirely false story, and the establishment making the all-too familiar charge that critics of the Government’s handling of terrorism are necessarily “supporters of terrorism.” But the similarities end here.

Indeed, Dr. Haneef, who got a taste of the Keelty-Andrews power while in custody — anytime he looked like getting a legal reprieve, the duo pushed him back into the nightmare of questioning and charges — ought not to worry unduly. For Australian civil society has a demonstrated a commitment to Dr. Haneef’s rights, well-being, and safety that stands in sharp contrast to the establishment’s monomaniacal drive to bring fresh charges against him. If today the Indian doctor has reunited with his family, it is thanks to two things — both largely outside the experience of this country. First, the support extended to him in Australia — by the legal fraternity, the judiciary, the ordinary people, and most importantly, a vibrant press that put the police and the prosecution under the scanner, questioning and exposing their every move. Two, the efforts made on Dr. Haneef’s behalf by the Indian government. The Australian press showed its counterpart in India the true meaning of courage and independence. And in a departure from the past, official India spoke up for Dr. Haneef — disregarding stinging domestic criticism against defending a terror accused.

The Glasgow suicide attack happened on June 30. By July 4, the Indian press had already named the guilty, Dr. Haneef prominently among them, based on information sourced from the police and the intelligence. Subsequent events threw up alternative explanations for everything the Indian doctor did — why he seemed in a hurry to board the flight to India, why he had a one-way ticket and so forth. But back then, Dr. Haneef was a “terror suspect” who had been caught trying to “flee Australia with a tell-tale one-way ticket.” The circumstantial evidence seemed strong, and provided fodder to journalists here: He was a cousin of the Ahmad brothers, Kaleel the Glasgow suicide bomber and Sabeel, charged with knowing about the plot. From this to the Al-Qaeda connection was but a small step: there was a rush of analyses and speculation on how the troika of the Ahmad brothers and Dr. Haneef might have ended up in the embrace of the dreaded terror outfit. Sections of the press also felt vindicated for being able to prove that Indian terrorism was not immune to global influence. Of course, there were the human interest stories, too, largely centred on Dr. Haneef’s wife who maintained that her husband was innocent. Yet without hard evidence this was at best a wife’s emotional reaction to her injured husband. It was left to the Australian press to show the way — and once this happened the direction of the India media coverage changed and it plunged to Dr. Haneef’s defence.

It is standard practice everywhere, Australia included, to rely on the police for initial information. Yet to the Australian media’s credit, it soon spotted holes, large holes, at least in the Haneef story. The Indian doctor’s detention without being formally charged was the first indication that the police case was not so strong after all. This despite periodic leaks by the Australian police insinuating a direct role for Dr. Haneef in the terror attack. By the time the case came up in court it was clear that the prosecution had a single, flimsy piece of evidence: the SIM card that Dr. Haneef left behind prior to leaving the United Kingdom for Australia. The prosecution argued that the card had been recovered from the wreckage of the Glasgow terror site, which proved that Dr. Haneef had offered material support to the terrorists. By Mr. Keelty’s own admission the specific allegation involved “recklessness rather than intention.” Not surprisingly, the court granted Dr. Haneef bail. However, to the horror of Australia’s press and its Law Council, Mr. Andrews cancelled the Indian doctor’s work visa and ordered him to be placed in immigration custody.

At this point The Australian newspaper struck. On July 18, it published the transcript of Dr. Haneef’s interrogation by the Australian Federal Police. The transcript wrecked the prosecution’s case. In the court affidavit , the prosecution claimed that Dr. Haneef boarded with his terrorism-accused cousins while in the U.K. The transcript showed he shared a flat with four other doctors. The court affidavit implied the doctor was guilty because he could not explain his one-way ticket to India. The transcript showed Dr. Haneef had a perfectly valid explanation for this: his father-in-law bought him the ticket because he was short of funds. He wanted to buy the return ticket with his own money. The transcript also showed the doctor applied for and secured a week’s leave from his hospital — evidence in fact that he intended to return.

Two days later, the Sydney Morning Herald dealt a further blow to the investigation. The SIM card that allegedly connected Dr. Haneef to the terror plot was not recovered from the Glasgow wreckage as the prosecution alleged. It was found 200 miles away in Liverpool in the possession of Sabeel Ahmad. Dr. Haneef had left it with his cousin a whole year earlier in order not to waste the credit balance — the done thing by departing overseas students. The doctor had admitted this to his interrogators. The Sydney Morning Herald editorially called the case “a shambles” and warned that “the general public smells a rat.” With the prosecution’s last defence shattered, Dr. Haneef secured his release.

The Australian media’s exposes were lapped up by the public, who responded with their own comments, analysis and blogs — some serious, some introspective and many darkly witty. Said a blogger: “Poor Dr. Haneef. Soon the world will become so insular we won’t speak to each other for fear of a terrorist association being made a year later, maybe 20 years later.”

Since Dr. Haneef has returned home, interest in the case is slowly waning in India. There has even been a suggestion that the press went overboard in reporting it. This is unfortunate considering the continuing threat to Dr. Haneef. By contrast, the Australian media has refused to lower the guard, demolishing every bit of evidence the government has dug up since the doctor’s release. It showed up Dr. Haneef’s alleged Al-Qaeda link to be false. It questioned the government’s charge that Dr. Haneef attempted to flee Australia on July 2 only because he was guilty. The proof to the contrary was in the four calls that Dr. Haneef placed to a British police officer, Ken Webster, eight hours before his scheduled departure. The Indian doctor told his interrogators he did this to clear his name — which the prosecution cunningly suppressed. “Give us the whole story Minister,” thundered Tony Wright in The Age. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’ s Jon Faine was more searing, asking Minister Andrews, “ Are you aware anywhere, at any time, in any investigation in the world, of any suspect in terrorism calling the police even once, let alone four times, to provide his whereabouts and his contact details?”

Should India learn something from this? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been attacked for admitting to a sense of unease over the easy labelling of suspects as terrorists. His government has been pulled up for showing concern for Dr. Haneef. In India anyone who speaks up at any time for a terror suspect is an “anti-national.” And, lastly, should we not wonder why we rarely question the police-government version in terrorism cases?

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