It was only a short time ago that a former Sydney Qantas cleaner was sentenced to a maximum twelve year jail term for publishing online a "do-it-yourself jihad" manual. (here and many other places).
It was a work out for the new law involving making a document connected with assistance in a terrorist act.
Does anyone have a problem with a loon going down for publishing a manual like this on an al-Qaeda endorsed web site? My preference would be to lock up all fundamentalists - Islamic and Christian - preaching acts of violence, but I'm afraid the prison system wouldn't handle the strain. And of course we'd get the usual nattering from the right wing commentariat worrying about the Christians, as well as the children.
But the result does make me wonder exactly which planet Miranda the Devine inhabits, as she goes on yet another rant about ham-strung cops, this time under the header Police tied in terrorism red tape.
Tied in red tape. Except when they send someone down for twelve years.
The police can't win. When it comes to weighing the safety of the public versus the perhaps mistaken detention of a terrorism suspect it seems we don't want a seasoned police commander trusting his instincts, and erring on the side of caution.
It will be our own fault when we eventually get a police force of automatons, blocking every hunch with the dead hand of objectivity.
The police can't win. Except when they send someone down for twelve years.
As usual, there's another agenda at work in the Devine's frothy attempt to whip up fear and loathing, and that's the ongoing campaign to redeem Mick Keelty, while pretending that the Haneef case wasn't such a bad caper after all.
Seizing on comments made by John Clarke, QC, at a conference organized by the Commonwealth Ombudsman (press release here) that the Haneef affair wasn't a debacle, she does his best to spin his remarks in a quite different direction. Because while he wouldn't call it a debacle, he does keep saying that serious mistakes were made. Okay so let's forget debacle. Let's settle for a nice masculine word like cock up, or fuck up.
If you want to listen to what John Clarke actually said on ABC Radio National breakfast, why not head off here.
If you want to read the original report by Clarke, why not head off here (downloads a pdf, main address takes you to the inquiry website).
Because when the Devine asks for someone to apologize now to Mick Keelty, as if he's somehow been exonerated, she takes cheekiness (or blatant use of white cleansing soap powder with extra sudsiness) to a new level. Umm, he was in charge at the time of a cock up, or a fuck up. Call it what you will. Suddenly we should apologize for a cock up? Well maybe for the language, but not for the deed.
Then the Devine manages to top her own cheekiness, with a desire to exonerate the cop leading the case, Ramzi Jabbour. Here's what Clarke's consistently said about Jabbour:
‘Decision makers need to step back for some moments and reflect on what they’re going to do and consider if it’s right,’ Mr Clarke said. ‘Too many decision makers don’t do that and that’s why we get such a proliferation of mistakes.
‘In the Haneef case, the person making the decision got too close to the action and got suspicions which, frankly, weren’t justifiable suspicions. I know that he thought Haneef was guilty but that, in my view, is because he lost his objectivity.’
And that's when the Devine resorts to a petulant "The police can't win." Despite in her very own column noting that the cops can win - as well as the matter of the Qantas cleaner, the cops also had a win in the matter of Abdl Benbrika and six of his followers.
When you read the Clarke inquiry, you realize that as usual, when confronted with an emergency, the explanation of a muddle will always win out over a conspiracy - at least so far as the police investigation went. The behavior of the Federal government is another matter, conveniently removed from any investigative analysis.
As Clarke notes, the cops weren't equipped for the investigation. They made major mistakes, and they didn't have the training or the expertise or the experience, to deal with complex and difficult new legislation, which Clarke considered difficult for lawyers to understand, let alone police officers required to apply it in what seemed like an emergency situation.
Clarke also had a number of unkind words for Minister Kevin Andrews, and still can't understand what he did, and why he did it at the time he did it, in relation to the matter of Haneef's visa. And he also has complained about how he wasn't give any power or capacity to investigate the political aspects of the case, not that you'll find the Devine complaining about that.
So when Miranda the Devine wraps up her tale with a bizarre image of a police force of automatons working under the dead hand of objectivity, you have to wonder if her real preference would be police state, or a return to the good old days of rampant corruption, as once exemplified by the NSW police force.
Because Haneef was innocent, the AFP buggered it up, Mick Keelty was in charge of the AFP at the time, and the Federal government deployed politics rather than justice to stir what they thought might be an election winning strategy. Live with it, and move on.
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