Mr Brown said an extended detention limit was necessary to sift through the volume of evidence needed in terrorism cases...Quite the contrast to Australia, where a frenzy of complaint erupted in certain quarters over Dr Haneef being kept in custody for a fortnight, and only then with the apparent reluctance of the court, which was only approving extensions for days, not weeks, at a time.
Mr Brown said that extensions beyond 28 days would be subject to scrutiny by a high court and by parliament in specific cases.
The Australian terrorism detention laws may have no set time limit for total detention. But in practice, as it is supervised by a court from the start, there is no realistic prospect of it being endless. To think otherwise means you have to be paranoid enough to believe that the Federal government could control a State appointed Magistrate.
The DPP today advised that it would review the evidence relating to the criminal charge against Dr Haneef. Even if the charge is dropped soon, as many suspect it will, it should be no reason to question the reasonableness of our pre-charge detention laws, which the British example indicates are far from draconian by international standards.
Dr Haneef's lawyer Peter Russo says that, apart from the issue of reviewing the criminal charge, the immediate issue is getting his client out of custody. I saw Dr Haneef's cousin, here to visit him, confirming on TV tonight that the doctor is being kept alone in his cell for 23 hours a day.
I will say it again: as far as I can tell, if Dr Haneef had arranged for the $10,000 bail surety to be paid (and even members of the public were offering to do this, although I am not sure if that is acceptable to the court), he could have avoided being in a cell in a real jail for 23 hours a day, and been kept in the much more relaxed form of detention in the immigration detention centre in Sydney, where he could mix with people who are not criminals and have had access to many recreational facilities not given to any type of prisoner.
If he is stressing out over the kind of detention he is being kept in now, it appears to be his own decision, and one that makes less and less sense the longer the review/trial process goes on.
>>If he is stressing out over the kind of detention he is being kept in now, it appears to be his own decision, and one that makes less and less sense the longer the review/trial process goes on.
ReplyDeleteWhat an asinine thing to say. There is nothing relaxed about immigration detention centers. The reason he stayed back is because Villawood is 100s of kms away from his lawyers.
Haneef is being falsely incarcerated. If Haneef could make his own decision, he probably would have flipped a bird at Howard and his incompetent crew, and left the country.
Err, of course he could be distressed in Villawood too, and (if the charge is now dropped) he deserves sympathy for having an ill founded charge preferred against him at all.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you can't tell me that time in Villawood is just as bad as spending 23 hours a day in a remand prison cell. (I am assuming that the management of Villawood would not have cause to put him in any form of solitary confinement. If I am wrong on that point, then I have no argument at all with him staying in Brisbane.)
It seems to me that everyone thinks that lawyers need to have face to face contact with clients frequently prior to court hearings. It's not true. Anyway, Russo has already flown to Canberra to help with the campaign for his client. Evidently, a trip to Villawood or 2 in the lead up to the hearings could equally be done.