Government appeals Haneef judgement - National - theage.com.au

The federal government is appealing a decision to set aside the cancellation of Indian doctor and cleared terror suspect Mohamed Haneef's visa.

On August 21, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said he would go to the High Court if necessary after Federal Court Judge Jeffrey Spender ordered Dr Haneef's work visa be returned.

Justice Spender claimed Mr Andrews had fallen "into jurisdictional error" when he cancelled Dr Haneef's visa on July 16.

Justice Spender said then that parliament could not have intended to enact a law that allowed a minister to oust a person for having an innocent association with someone suspected of criminal conduct.

But Mr Andrews said he believed the judge was wrong and the government would appeal to the full bench of the Federal Court.

The order was stayed for 21 days.

Justice Spender said Mr Andrews' decision to cancel the visa on July 16 hinged on the contention that Dr Haneef had "an association" with terrorists, his second-cousins, British terror suspects Kafeel and Sabeel Ahmed.

Dr Haneef, who has since returned to India, was charged on July 14 with intentionally providing resources to a terrorist organisation - a charge which was later dropped.

The charge related to him giving his mobile phone SIM card to Sabeel Ahmed in Britain the year before.

But in a statement today, Mr Andrews said the Australian government solicitor had lodged an appeal against Justice Spender's decision to set aside Dr Haneef's visa cancellation.

An extension to the stay on Dr Haneef's visa was also sought.

"As minister for immigration and citizenship, I made the decision to cancel Dr Haneef's visa in the national interest and I stand by that decision," Mr Andrews said in a statement.

"It was the correct decision for the national interest and I believe that Justice Spender is wrong in his interpretation of the legislation.

"It is a privilege for visitors to be granted a visa to be in Australia, it is not an inalienable right.

"The security of the nation and the protection of all Australians comes first."

The appeal was lodged in Brisbane's Federal Court.

AAP

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Holes in case against Habib | The Australian

HOLES have emerged in the evidence Australian intelligence agencies have relied on to paint former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib as a national security threat.

Authorities have cited phone calls made by a US terrorist to Mr Habib's Sydney home in 1993 to bolster their case against him.

But The Australian has learned the terrorist could not have made the calls, which phone records reveal were made after he was arrested over the 1993 bomb attack on New York's World Trade Centre.

The two calls - from a New Jersey phone number linked to the convicted terrorist Ibrahim El-Gabrowny - were made nearly three weeks after he had been arrested.

It is understood that the records of the calls form part of the reason Mr Habib is considered a security threat.

But the latest revelations back up claims made by Mr Habib that the calls were faxes about fundraising activities sent to him by other members of the New Jersey Muslim community with access to the same phone.

The World Trade Centre was attacked for the first time on February 26, 1993, and El-Gabrowny was arrested on March 4 along with several other men. The Australian has established that the two calls to Mr Habib's home in 1993 were made on March 20 and 21, while El-Gabrowny was still in custody.

A spokeswoman for the federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said it would be inappropriate to comment on the evidence. "It is appropriate that the allegations concerning Mr Habib are tested in proper proceedings in the context of all relevant material," she said.

The Australian is investigating the basis of the allegations that Mr Habib is a national security threat, as the Sydney father of four attempts to clear his name and regain his Australian passport.

Mr Habib is also suing the federal Government for damages over his detention in Egypt and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he was held as a terror suspect for three years without being charged.
Mr Habib was arrested in Pakistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks and taken to Egypt, where he claims he was subjected to months of brutal torture before being taken to Guantanamo Bay.

He has always maintained the Australian Government was complicit in the treatment he received. The Government has strongly and repeatedly denied his allegations.

Mr Habib has said Australia's spy agency ASIO was aware at the time of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings that he knew many of the members of the Muslim community in New Jersey, including some of the men convicted over the bombings.

He claimed ASIO had approached him in Australia and had asked him to spy on that community for them. He said he refused.

Mr Habib has also revealed that ASIO had never even questioned him about the alleged calls from El-Gabrowny until 1999, after an expose on the Nine Network's 60 Minutes program.

When ASIO did ask, he said he told them the calls were faxes of fundraising pamphlets that been sent to him.

Even after that, it did not appear that authorities were concerned about his alleged links to the men.

The NSW police protective security group, which was the forerunner to the current counter-terrorism group, carried out a security check on Mr Habib a month before he was arrested in Pakistan and cleared him of being a security threat.

The latest revelations about the phone records come after one of the men arrested in Pakistan with Mr Habib in 2001 came forward to corroborate his claims that he was held in the Australian high commission in the capital, Islamabad, and interrogated by an Australian diplomat.

Ibrahim Diab, who was arrested but quickly released, will give a statement to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal supporting Mr Habib's clams.

The first allegation made about Mr Habib by the US Government was that while in Afghanistan he had helped train two of the terrorists behind the September 11 attacks. That was found to be untrue because the hijackers were already in the US long before Customs records show Mr Habib left Australia.

Trouble began for Mr Habib in 1991 when he took his family on a holiday to Egypt and then to New York to visit his two sisters.

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Now it's Minister fudging CV details - National - theage.com.au

KEVIN Andrews has fudged his CV. Both his parliamentary and ministerial websites claim he was "co-author" of three books in the days before he entered Parliament. All appear to have been pumped out by the then Melbourne barrister in a remarkable creative outburst in 1990.

But the publishers do not see his role that way. The name Kevin Andrews is not on the title pages. The publishers credit other authors and editors with assembling these collections. Mr Andrews appears to have done no more than contribute one paper to each — he does not even have top billing.

Over the past week, the Immigration Minister he has been scathing about irregularities discovered in the CV of Dr Mohamed Haneef's former Gold Coast colleague Dr Mohammed Asif Ali. The doctor is reported to have left the country and lost his job for exaggerating his employment in India by three months.

The three books Mr Andrews claims to have co-authored are:

■Rights and Freedoms in Australia, published by The Federation Press. The title page names Melbourne lawyers Jude Wallace and Tony Pagone, QC, as editors of this collection of 25 papers. Mr Andrews' lone contribution is titled "You as an Elderly Person".

■Trends in Biomedical Regulation, published by Butterworths. The title page says this collection was edited by Hiram Caton, then of Griffith University. Mr Andrews contributed one of 21 papers, "Regulating Embryo Experimentation".

■Issues in Biomedical Ethics, published by Macmillan in India. This record of proceedings of an international congress of the Festival of Life was edited by Dr C. J. Vas and E. J. De Souza, leaders of a Catholic ethics centre in Mumbai. Mr Andrews' contribution, one of 39 papers, was "In-vitro Fertilisation and Genetic Manipulation — Australian Developments".

Publishers say they would regard Mr Andrews as merely a contributor to these collections. The definition of authorship in the Vancouver Protocol cited by academic bodies such as the National Health and Medical Research Council requires, at a minimum, "substantial participation (in) conception and design … drafting … and final approval of the version to be published".

That is not the minister's view of the situation. He stands by his claims of co-authorship. "The minister did not ever claim to be a lead author," his spokeswoman, Kate Walsh, explained. "He is the co-author of publications that have no lead author, that have a series of chapters written by different people."

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Andrews goes galumphing off after prey - Opinion - theage.com.au

The surreal second interview with Haneef is almost indecipherable, writes Sushi Das.

YOU might think there are no similarities between the Mohamed Haneef saga and Lewis Carroll's nonsensical poem Jabberwocky. But there are. Both are spectacularly absurd.

Jabberwocky, written as part of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, is seven rhyming verses of glorious nonsense, made up of meaningless words stitched together to create a poem that tells the tale of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Bizarre as it may seem, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, in trying to nail Haneef, has tried to slay his own Jabberwock.

In its entirety, Jabberwocky obeys the rules of poetry and presents as a cohesive body of work. But don't go trying to do a forensic examination of the words in each line because it won't make any sense. Just take a look at the first verse.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesSimilarly, Haneef's story, as presented by Andrews, of a man with dubious associations trying to flee Australia using his sick newborn daughter in India as an excuse, appears, superficially at least, to be plausible. But don't go trying to deconstruct the words in the transcript of the second interview between Haneef and the Australian Federal Police, because it won't make any sense at all.

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

In the interview, Haneef is presented with a translation from Urdu to English of his online chat with his brother in India. Detective Sergeant Adam Simms reads the translation to Haneef in a "You say, then your brother says, and then you say" style. Sometimes this changes to "Then you go, and your brother then says".

It's hard enough following the conversation when your English is perfect. Haneef, whose English is fractured, must have had some difficulty following who was "saying" and who was "going". Nevertheless, several times Haneef tries to explain that the translation is flawed, but he is dismissed and told he can give his version of events later.

We learn from the chatroom conversation that Haneef and his brother were speaking Urdu, which, by the way, is rendered as Udo in the first police interview, and as Burdu in the second interview. Classy.

Regardless, we get the impression that Haneef and his brother either speak Urdu in a fractured, splintered, kind of way, or that the AFP translation is so appalling that what is presented to Haneef is as close to double Dutch as you can get. In fact, the translation is so poor the police officer is forced to offer a choice of translations.

Here's a quote from Simms: "Your brother then says 'Now did you take leave from your hospital' and you go 'hmm' and then you say 'don't know what happened' or 'do you know what happened' ".

Putting aside the poor translation from Urdu to English, or the fact that a spoken internet conversation is read out to Haneef in the most confusing manner or that Haneef disagrees with parts of it, what is most alarming of all is that this is the chatroom conversation that the Immigration Minister relied heavily on to defend the cancellation of Haneef's visa on the ground of bad character.

Not only that, in defending his controversial decision, Andrews claimed on July 31 that Haneef's brother, in that conversation, had warned him "nothing has been found out about you" in relation to the failed British terrorism plot. This crucial line does not appear anywhere in the transcript of the police interview.

Either those words were never uttered or, if they were, they were not put to Haneef in the police interview. If that line was important enough for Andrews to release to the media, why was Haneef not questioned about its meaning?

We know now that Andrews, in releasing snippets of the chatroom conversation, was not only releasing snippets of snippets, he was releasing words that are yet to be found. It may seem pedantic to dissect words in such a detailed manner. But when a handful of words is all that an embattled minister uses to sully a man, then each one is critical.

And words are what it all comes down to. They matter. Indeed, the words penned by Lewis Carroll more than 100 years ago are deliciously apt when examining Andrews' attempts to slay his Jabberwock.

He took his vorpal sword in hand:What Andrews thought he was doing when he cancelled Haneef's visa is anybody guess. But certainly he was ready to use his sword on anyone with even a remote association to undesirable elements when they came stumbling through the woods.

Long time the manxome foe he sought,

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,And when he revoked that visa, Andrews must have thought he'd won the fight.

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and throughAnd galumphing off did Andrews go. But as we know, this story is not over yet. The Jabberwock might just make a come back whiffling his way through the tulgey wood.

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

Sushi Das is a senior writer.

Email: sdas@theage.com.au

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Andrews says release could hurt terror case - National - theage.com.au

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews says he fears the release of a police interview transcript could put terrorism investigations in Australia and the UK in jeopardy.

Lawyers for former terror suspect Dr Mohamed Haneef yesterday released the 378-page transcript of a second police interview with their client, conducted in Brisbane on July 13.

In the interview, the Gold Coast-based Indian doctor defends the way he hastily attempted to leave Brisbane on July 2 on a one-way flight to India and denies any knowledge of the UK terror plot.

His second cousin Kafeel was the alleged driver of the jeep that crashed into Glasgow Airport just days before. He died in hospital early this month.

Another second cousin Sabeel Ahmed - who had Dr Haneef's mobile SIM card - has been charged over his alleged involvement in the failed London bomb attack.

Dr Haneef's lawyers released the transcript a day after Federal Court judge Justice Jeffrey Spender quashed Mr Andrews' decision to cancel the 27-year-old doctor's work visa on character grounds.

Lawyer Peter Russo said the publication was justified, given the way the police and Mr Andrews had selectively read to the media parts of the interview.

"Look what they (the AFP) do - isn't this a more transparent way to deal with the issue?" Mr Russo told AAP today.

He described a move by the AFP to refer his actions to Queensland's Legal Services Commission for possible disciplinary action as "bully boy tactics".

But Mr Andrews said he shared the concern of the AFP, who had told him they were gravely concerned about the release of security-sensitive information.

"The AFP have been very concerned about releasing evidence which could jeopardise their ongoing investigations, ongoing investigations in the UK and indeed the prosecution in the UK," Mr Andrews told reporters today.

Mr Andrews said he knew of other material, which he could not disclose, that was "at odds with some of the replies that Dr Haneef gave in those transcripts of evidence".

The AFP said last night it had referred the matter to the Queensland watchdog because it believed Dr Haneef's defence team was acting in an "unprofessional and inappropriate" way.

Dr Haneef is currently in India after a terrorism-related offence against him was dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions on July 28.

But he cannot return to Australia while his visa is cancelled and an appeal against the Federal Court decision by the government continues.

Mr Russo said today he doubted whether his client's situation would be resolved until next year.

"I think it's probably time now that some hard decisions are made," Mr Russo said.

"He's not the type of person who wants to be inactive for any length of time - it just doesn't sit right with him.

"So I think ... it would be in his interests to get some work (in India)."

AAP

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Audio:Information Session: Anti-terror laws

Ian Brown,President of the Australian Lawyers Alliance,explains the contents of the Anti-Terror Laws, how they impact on us, and what we can do to assist in the process of having these laws revised.



Date: Sunday 19 August 2007

Venue: Conference room, level 5, building M10 (Social Science), Griffith University (Mt Gravatt campus)

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Haneef case should end: Law Council | The Australian

THE Federal Court's decision that the Australian Government can not cancel a person's visa on the basis of an innocent association should be the end of the matter, says the Law Council.

"Australians should be concerned that Minister Andrews is so determined to pursue the power to expel a person from Australia, on the basis that they have, without more, merely associated with a suspected criminal," Law Council of Australia President Tim Bugg said.

"This is a character test that is not about character at all," he said.

"Why would the Minister want the discretion to expel a person based on an association that ended ten years ago, or was only fleeting, or only reflected a familial connection or professional relationship?" Mr Bugg said.

"Broad, unfettered discretions of that kind encourage sloppy research and lazy decision making. That is not the way to protect the Australian community."

Whether or not Justice Spender's decision survives appeal, serious flaws will remain in how the criminal law and the Migration Act interact, he said.

Mr Bugg said Dr Haneef's ability to obtain a fair trial was not a matter the Minister was required to consider when cancelling his visa.

"Surely the Migration Act should require the Minister to take fair trial implications into account," Mr Bugg said.

"The Minister's continuing public comments on the alleged merits of the Haneef case, which are so inconsistent with any sense of procedural fairness or the presumption of innocence, provide sufficient cause for his removal."

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews this morning lent his support to the Australian Federal Police which is referring the conduct of Dr Haneef's legal team to authorities.

The AFP said it had complained to the Queensland Legal Services Commission over the release yesterday of the interview between police and the Indian-born doctor on July 13 and 14.

Dr Haneef's lawyers said they had released the transcript, which they say shows the former terror suspect has nothing to hide, to counter "slander" by federal authorities.

Mr Andrews said the transcript was something the AFP controlled but he agreed with the criticism of its disclosure.

"They are obviously very concerned about this, they regard the release of that transcript as irresponsible and unprofessional and that's why thev've taken that stand," the minister told reporters.

"I share their view.

"This is a balance of public information on one hand and national security on the other.

"I don't think Dr Haneef's lawyers, running around, conducting some sort of public relations campaign the way they are, is doing anything in terms of the national security of the country."

Mr Andrews said both he and the AFP were concerned about the release of any information which could jeopardise ongoing investigations of the British attack both in Australia and the UK and the prosecutions in the UK.

"Information should not be released which jeopardises those investigations," he said.

Dr Haneef was charged with a terrorism-related offence on July 14, but released when the Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew the charge on July 27.

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Brother told Haneef to call police - National - smh.com.au

THE supposedly damning internet chat-room conversation between Mohamed Haneef and his brother included an entreaty for Dr Haneef to leave his contact details with the British police before leaving Australia.

But this detail was omitted by the Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, when he went public with the discussion.

Mr Andrews used selective quotes from the chat-room talk last month to justify his decision to cancel Dr Haneef's visa, suggesting the doctor had suspicious motives for leaving Australia and may have had advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow.

The conversation between Dr Haneef and his brother Shuaib took place as the Gold Coast doctor waited for the courtesy van to take him to the airport on July 2.

The details have emerged only after the release of a second transcript of interview between Dr Haneef and Australian Federal Police investigators.

This shows that Dr Haneef's brother asked him, in Urdu, if he had been able to contact a Scotland Yard officer, Tony Walker. "I am not able to get at his phone," replied Dr Haneef in the translation presented to him by police. His brother then said: "Tell him the phone number and come."

Before leaving Brisbane, Dr Haneef tried on four occasions to contact the British police. But Shuaib Haneef's further urging of Dr Haneef to assist police with their inquiries was not mentioned by Mr Andrews.

Instead, he referred to Shuaib advising Dr Haneef: "Tell them you have to as you have a daughter born. Do not tell them anything else."

This was presented as meaning Dr Haneef had something to hide, but Mr Andrews did not mention the conversation took place after Dr Haneef made all his travel plans and repeatedly tried to call British police.

Mr Andrews also did not mention that Dr Haneef believed parts of the transcript - which reads as if it were spoken in broken English, not the conversation of two educated brothers in their mother tongue - had been mistranslated.

The transcript was released by Dr Haneef's lawyers yesterday to correct "continuing attempts being made to slander his name by innuendo and selective release of information by government and federal police spokespeople".

But Mr Andrews rejected the notion that he had misled the public, unfairly tarnished Dr Haneef or even selectively quoted from the discussion.

"That is absolutely not true," his spokeswoman told the Herald. "That was only the material that the AFP would enable the minister to release. There is still a range of material we could not release on security grounds."

The AFP said the transcript's release was "unprofessional and inappropriate". Its interview was conducted on July 13 and 14, after Dr Haneef had spent almost two weeks in custody without charge.

The transcript reveals that even after 12 days of frantic investigations into Dr Haneef, authorities had little evidence against him.

His second cousin, Kafeel Ahmed, died this month of burns sustained during the Glasgow attack. Sabeel Ahmed, Kafeel's brother, has been accused of withholding information that could have prevented a terrorist act.

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Interview discredits claim by Andrews | The Australian

CLAIMS by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews that his decision to cancel Mohamed Haneef's visa was based on much more than a mobile phone SIM card given to a second-cousin have been undermined by the release of the second police record of interview.

Police officer Adam Simms, who questioned Dr Haneef during the second interview last month, told him: "Tell me exactly. Now let's not forget, Mohamed, the reason you are sitting here and the reason you've been in police custody is because of this issue with the SIM card -- now it's causing you a lot of grief. We need to be clear as to what is happening with this SIM card. OK?"

A year before the foiled June 29-30 terror acts in London and Glasgow, Dr Haneef had given a SIM card, which had some unused credit, to his second-cousin, Sabeel, who is not accused of being directly involved in the attacks. Sabeel's brother Kafeel died after suffering serious burns in a Jeep Cherokee in the attack on Glasgow airport.

The transcript shows Dr Haneef also tried to explain to the Australian Federal Police the context of a reference in a chatroom exchange with his brother, Shoaib, translated from Urdu, to a "project" involving Kafeel.

Late last month amid calls for his sacking, Mr Andrews selectively released incomplete portions of the transcript from the conversation on July 2 -- the day Dr Haneef tried to return to India -- including the Urdu-to-English reference to Kafeel being involved "in some sort of project over there".

Mr Andrews has consistently said that his suspicions had been heightened by this information and other secret material he had received from the police. The reference to "project" has been characterised as pointing to a premeditated terror act of which Dr Haneef was aware. But in the interview Dr Haneef said the reference to "project" referred to a PhD exercise that Kafeel had been completing at England's Cambridge University.

The interview also scotches reports that police suspected Dr Haneef was plotting to attack the world's tallest residential building, the Q1 tower on the Gold Coast. Police showed Dr Haneef numerous pictures downloaded from his seized computer laptop, including some showing him and his wife standing in front of the building. He was asked a handful of innocuous questions about the picture.

Lawyers for Dr Haneef yesterday cited a need for transparency and openness in the controversial case as they defied a formal AFP request and posted the entire 378-page record of interview on websites.

The release drew strong criticism from the AFP, which confirmed it had complained to Queensland's Legal Services Commission about the conduct of Dr Haneef's lawyers. The AFP denied late yesterday that it had improperly leaked information, but accused Dr Haneef's lawyers of running the case in the media.

The interview, conducted on July 13-14 after Dr Haneef had been held in AFP custody in Brisbane without charge for 12 days, canvassed medical training, family ties, his newborn daughter, religious views, finances, communications, travel, and an internet chat room exchange with his brother in India.

In describing his gift of the SIM card to Sabeel last year, Dr Haneef says: "He wanted the SIM card use for the free minutes. I told you about that, so he wanted to extend the contract and then he asked me 'if you could give it to me, I'll extend it'. And when I gave it to him I said that 'if you want to extend it, I'm cancelling my direct debit'."

The case against Dr Haneef collapsed last month amid a series of police and prosecution errors, leading to his return to India. The Federal Court found on Tuesday that Mr Andrews had made the wrong decision when he cancelled Dr Haneef's visa.

Solicitor Peter Russo said he and Dr Haneef were fed up with the ongoing peddling of innuendo and half-truths.

"There is no secret squirrel information in there," Mr Russo said. "Releasing the transcript of the second interview shows Dr Haneef had nothing to hide.

"He wants all of the matters raised with him by federal police and his answers to those questions put into the public arena because of the continuing attempts being made to slander his name by innuendo."

Mr Russo said he suspected the police had taken longer than normal to provide the transcript to Dr Haneef because "it clearly shows what we have said all along -- Dr Haneef was at all times trying to assist police".

But the AFP last night criticised the release of the information, denied that its own officers had selectively leaked information to Dr Haneef's detriment, but suggested there had been "inappropriate conduct" by other agencies which "will be referred to the appropriate authorities".

"The continuing attempts by Dr Haneef's defence team to use the media to run their case is both unprofessional and inappropriate and the AFP has raised this aspect with the Queensland Legal Services Commission. The AFP has acted appropriately throughout the investigation."

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Transcript supports Haneef case - National - theage.com.au

FORMER terror suspect Mohamed Haneef disputed with police the translation of a computer chatroom discussion that was used by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews to justify his decision to remove Dr Haneef's visa last month.

The full transcript of an all-night interview with police, released yesterday by Dr Haneef's lawyers, shows clearly that Dr Haneef disagreed with parts of the translation into English from Urdu and the police interpretation of the discussion with his brother that occurred on the day he planned to leave Australia.

It makes clear that Dr Haneef had gained permission to take leave from the Gold Coast Hospital, and that a plane ticket had been booked before his brother contacted him via computer.

The transcript also shows clearly that Mr Andrews used highly selective fragments of the police interview that placed Dr Haneef in the worst possible light. Mr Andrews, on July 31, concentrated on a passage where Dr Haneef's younger brother, Shuaib, had advised the doctor to tell his hospital that he was leaving because he had a new daughter and "tell them nothing else".

Dr Haneef, in the interview, says that in fact, his brother was asking him whether he had told the hospital this, and that he had already told the hospital before the discussion with his brother.

However, Mr Andrews said yesterday the public release of the police interview did not change his reasons for revoking Dr Haneef's visa late last month. He said his reasons were broader than the material contained in either of the two police interviews. A Federal Court judge on Tuesday ruled against Mr Andrews' decision to revoke Dr Haneef's visa, declaring he had made a "jurisdictional error".

Justice Jeffrey Spender also criticised Mr Andrews for publicly releasing selective material that had not been placed before the court.

However, the Federal Government is appealing to a full bench of the Federal Court on the grounds that Mr Andrews had relied correctly on a legal precedent.

Dr Haneef's lawyers said they had decided to release the 378-page transcript of the second police interview to counter attempts by the Federal Government and Australian Federal Police to "slander Dr Haneef's name by innuendo and selective release" of information.

The Australian Federal Police issued a statement last night saying it had referred possible inappropriate conduct related to the Haneef case by government officials to "appropriate authorities".

The AFP also complained to the Queensland Legal Services Commission about the transcript's release.

Solicitor Peter Russo said that a reading of the full transcript made it clear there was no basis to allege wrongdoing against Dr Haneef.

The transcript showed his client had attempted to contact British police so he could explain his position in relation to a SIM card loaned to his cousin Sabeel, who is suspected of having a role in a British terror plot.

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