Australian minister speaks out over Indian doctor case

Australian police continue to suspect that an Indian doctor was part of the failed British bombing conspiracy last month despite a charge against him being dropped for lack of evidence, a government minister said.

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews yesterday released some of the police evidence against Mohamed Haneef that persuaded him to revoke the 27-year-old doctor’s work visa.

Andrews said he would not release all the evidence upon which he had based his decision because it could jeopardise continuing investigations both in Australia and overseas.

Haneef, who had worked as a junior doctor in an Australian hospital for almost a year, was arrested on July 2 at an airport in Brisbane on Australia’s east coast as he was about to fly to India.

British police had advised Australian investigators that two of Haneef’s cousins had been arrested and his mobile phone SIM card had been seized as evidence after failed car bombs in London and Glasgow.

Citing police evidence, Andrews said that on the day Haneef attempted to leave Australia, he was told by one of his brothers in India in an internet chat room: “Nothing has been found out about you.”

The brother, Shoaib Haneef, told his sibling to leave Australia that day, Andrews said.

The brother also told Haneef to tell his hospital boss that he was leaving because his wife had given birth and “do not tell them anything else”, Andrews said.

“Investigators consider Haneef’s attempted urgent departure from Australia on a one-way ticket for a purpose that appears to be a false pretext to be highly suspicious and may reflect Haneef’s awareness of the conspiracy to plan and prepare the acts of terrorism in London and Glasgow,” Andrews said.

Haneef’s lawyer Peter Russo called on the government to “stop their campaign of innuendo and slander” against his client and to reveal any proof it had.

Haneef’s cousin Imran Siddiqui accused Andrews of misleading the public.

“He knows that they have nothing against Haneef and this seems just another effort by Andrews to justify his actions,” Siddiqui said.

“This is yet another desperate effort by Kevin Andrews to mislead the Australian public.”

The Australian Democrats, a minor opposition party, accused Andrews of unfairly seeking justification for ruining Haneef’s life.

“This shouldn’t be about ministers seeing if they can get enough information out there to make the public sufficiently suspicious so that they’ll let them get away with destroying a person’s life,” Democrats Leader Andrew Bartlett told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

Andrews did not say how the information was obtained, but police have said they seized Haneef’s computer after his arrest and were sifting through tens of thousands of documents.

Haneef was reunited with his wife and newborn daughter in his hometown of Bangalore, India, over the weekend after spending 25 days in Australian jail on a charge of supporting the failed attacks by leaving his SIM card with a relative in Britain last year.