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Police ignored Kafeel confession

Melbourne: Bangalore doctor Mohamed Haneef, wrongly accused of involvement in the failed U.K. terror plot, was innocent all along but the Australian police ignored vital evidence in the botched case.

Haneef was charged with extending support to a terror organisation after his SIM card was allegedly found with his second cousin Sabeel Ahmed, who has now been convicted of concealing information about the terror plan.

The Australian police and the Commonwealth Director of Prosecution, however, overlooked a “confession” email sent to Sabeel by the main accused Kafeel though it showed that Sabeel was not in league with him, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday.

Kafeel, who drove a jeep packed with gas cylinders towards the Glasgow airport after he failed to explode bombs in two cars parked outside London nightclubs in June last, sent his brother Sabeel by SMS the access codes to the email message.

“This is the ‘project’ that I was working on for some time now. Everything else was a lie. And I hope you can all forgive me for being such a good liar. It was necessary ...,” Kafeel said in the email, according to the report.

A source in Britain who has closely followed the case told the Herald that the police in Sabeel’s hometown of Liverpool said the investigators had the email text within 72 hours and probably they already knew that Sabeel was never part of Kafeel’s plans.

The case against Haneef centred on allegations that Sabeel, a doctor practising in England to whom Haneef had given an old SIM card of his, was part of a terrorist organisation.

But the Old Bailey court in London on Friday accepted that there was “no sign” of Sabeel “being an extremist or party to extremist views.”

However, Haneef’s defence team was unaware of the email evidence all this while and his solicitor Peter Russo told the Herald on Sunday,

“We weren’t shown any documents from the U.K. in any of the material we saw.” — PTI

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