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Haneef team given immigration documents

June 17, 2008

Lawyers for former terrorism suspect Mohamed Haneef have been provided with more than 250 immigration department documents.

The lawyers are appealing to the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Brisbane for access to documents after the immigration department withheld them from release under freedom of information laws.

Dr Haneef's legal team plans to provide the documents to the judicial inquiry into the handling of their client's case.

Immigration department lawyers told the tribunal they could not release about 15 documents being sought by Dr Haneef's lawyers because they either contain national security information or advice to former immigration minister Kevin Andrews.

They argue the release of the documents would not assist the public.

The hearing continues.

ABC 16 June 2008

The Court of Appeal has ordered that Victorian man Jack Thomas must be retried on terrorism-related charges.

The 35-year-old Werribee man will be retried on charges that he accepted funds from a terrorist organisation and possessed a falsified Australian passport.

His convictions on both counts were quashed in 2006.

But the Crown argued he made admissions during an interview with the ABC's Four Corners program and should be retried.

The defence said the Crown knew about the interview during the first trial, and thus it could not be deemed fresh evidence.

But the Court of Appeal has rejected the defence submission.

His legal team is considering a High Court appeal.

Mr Thomas was not in the court for the finding, but his mother and brother were.

They did not comment.

Easier to say that Guantanamo should be closed than to work out how

Date: June 14 2008

William Glaberson
THE Guantanamo Bay cells will not close any day soon.

But the Supreme Court's decision has stripped away the legal premise for the remote prison camp that officials opened six years ago in the belief that American law would not reach across the Caribbean to a US naval station in Cuba.

And without that, much will change.

The decision gave prisoners the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, meaning federal judges will have the power to check the Government's claims that the 270 men still held there are dangerous terrorists. That will force officials to answer questions they have long deflected about evidence despite international criticism and expressions of support, from the President, George Bush, down, for closing the camp.

Some cases are likely to result in court orders freeing detainees. The Government said yesterday that its prosecutions before military commissions at Guantanamo would continue, but habeas corpus suits resulting from the justices' decision are certain to complicate the 19 war crimes cases under way.

Just as important, some lawyers said, defending scores of cases would be a huge burden for the Government, and increase pressure inside the Bush Administration to send prisoners home.

Prisoners' lawyers have long said that the Government will not be able to justify the detention of many of the men. Pentagon officials, on the other hand, have maintained that classified evidence establishes that many of them are dangerous. The federal courts will now have the power to sort through those assertions.