Man, I never saw THIS coming: We got it wrong on Haneef: DPP chief.
MOHAMED HANEEF should never have been charged, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Damian Bugg, QC, admitted last night when releasing details of a report into the role his office played in the case.
The review, conducted by an unnamed private barrister, concluded the DPP's office had not properly appreciated the evidence against Dr Haneef and had not given appropriate advice before he was charged.
Mr Bugg concluded: "The DPP has learnt from this matter and will take further steps to ensure that advice is provided in accordance with the role of the DPP in situations such as this."
Yeah, see, the nation's safety is SO important that failing to follow procedure becomes the MO. So we can ALL feel safe about that right?
Dr Haneef was charged in July with recklessly assisting a terrorist organisation said to consist of his cousins Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed. Dr Haneef had left an old SIM card with Sabeel in Liverpool, England. A year later, Kafeel rammed a burning Jeep into a Glasgow airport terminal.
At first, it was believed the SIM card was found at the scene of the crime. Then it was learnt the card was still in Liverpool.
The review concluded: "That change was not appreciated by the prosecutor at the time."
Mr Bugg said the DPP is supposed to ask "whether the evidence establishes reasonable prospects of conviction" but the review found "the advice in this case did not address that test".
So, we know what the DPP is SUPPOSED to do, the question is why they failed at damned near every step on the way, including engaging any level at all of critical thinking.
The review confirmed other errors in the evidence were the fault of the Federal Police.
Good. So the failures were pretty well universal when it comes to dealing with potential terrorist threats. But don't worry, they are LEARNING from those failures, yep, boy we wont do that again, we'll go on to even bigger failures.
The unaddressed problem here is that it is obvious that as soon as the security apparatus goes under pressure, it runs about with its hair on fire and loses any semblance of rationality or respect for the rule of law.
This is not a function of its structure or its formal processes, I'll bet they are ALL "best practise" based; it is a function of the people who have been appointed to the job and the culture they have established.
Those problems will NOT be touched by reviews, investigations or "lessons learned'" reports, that will only come when these people get over their fear. We'll be waiting a while for that.
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