Press Releases and Announcements - 29 July 2008
Haneef Lawyers call for Royal Commission powers following the announcement that select submissions will not be made public
Lawyers for Dr Mohamed Haneef have again called for Mr Clarke to
be given Royal Commission powers after an announcement that
selected submissions, and all results of questioning would not be
made public.
Responding to the Clarke Inquiry's increased secrecy level
announced today, Dr Haneef's lawyer, Rod Hodgson of Maurice
Blackburn Lawyers, said that the current government had promised a
full judicial inquiry. Mr. Hodgson said:
'Whatever this Inquiry is, it is not judicial and it is not
open. It is a very convenient result for the Australian
agencies, especially the AFP and DIAC, in that they cannot be made
accountable to the Australian public because of an alleged fear of
offending a foreign government.
'The credibility of what Mr Clarke is being told can be measured
by DIAC's actions in the recent freedom of information dispute. It
began with over 200 documents in dispute. That number was whittled
down to 6 in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and only one of
the over 200 documents, originally in dispute, was upheld by the
AAT as being lawfully withheld.
'We recommend that the public go to our submission available on
the Clarke Inquiry's website with all of its supporting documents
to see the extent to which the documents which we have obtained
suggest that the key agencies are incompetent, inconsistent and
unable to get the facts right in the documents they produced during
Dr. Haneef's ordeal.
'More recently, the AFP's unwillingness to comply with their
legal obligations has been revealed. The recently provided first
transcript of the arrest and interview of Dr. Haneef at Brisbane
Airport revealed that the AFP failed to provide Dr Haneef with a
lawyer when he asked for one. The transcripts that were recently
handed over should have been given to Dr. Haneef's lawyers within a
week of the interview. Despite this, they were only handed over,
only last week, after counsel for the Clarke Inquiry requested them
to do so.
Media Enquiries: For more information or to
organise an interview, please contact: Meaghan Telford, Maurice
Blackburn - 0437 586 093.