Australian terror suspect faces immigration detention July 17, 2007
Posted by Scarecrow in 07/16/07 ABC Radio Australia.trackback
Australian terror suspect faces immigration detention
07/16/2007
Australia’s immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, has announced Dr Mohamed Haneef has had his visa cancelled and will be taken into immigration detention.
Earlier Monday an Australian magistrate granted bail to the Gold Coast-based doctor who was charged Saturday with recklessly providing support to a terrorist organisation in failed UK bomb attacks.
Mr Andrews says he has used his powers under the Migration Act to cancel Haneef’s visa because he has failed the character test.
“In particular, a person fails the character test if – and I quote – ‘the person has or has had an association with someone else or with a group or organisation whom the Minister reasonably suspects has been involved has been or is involved in criminal conduct’,” he said.
Mr Andrews says Haneef will remain in immigration detention while the legal proceedings against him continue.
He has already surrendered his passport.
In court Monday the Commonweath director of public prosecutions argued that Haneef was a flight risk.
In response, magistrate Jaqui Payne listed eight reasons for granting bail, among them that there was no direct link to a terrorist organisation in Britain.
Haneef was detained for almost a fortnight before he was charged over the weekend with recklessly providing resources to a terrorist organisation.
It is alleged he gave a mobile phone SIM card to a British terror suspect.
Two British suspects released
Two men arrested after the failed car bomb attacks in Britain last month have been released without charge.
The men, believed to have come recently from Saudi Arabia, were arrested at a hospital near Glasgow.
It is the same hospital where another of the charged men worked and the driver of the failed airport car bomb was first treated.
That driver, Kafeel Ahmed, has been moved to another hospital but is still in a critical condition with severe burns.
His brother, Sabeel, will appear in a central London court charged with withholding information about a terrorist attack.
Their cousin, Mohamed Haneef, is the man being held and charged in Australia.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/s1979646.htm
