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WSWS : News & Analysis : Australia & South Pacific

Police claims raise new questions about “terrorist” raids in Australia

By Mike Head
17 November 2005

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For the past 10 days, Australian media outlets have bombarded the public with lurid headlines and reports designed to justify last week’s massive raids by state and federal police and intelligence agencies on homes in Sydney and Melbourne.

On the basis of unsubstantiated police leaks and prosecution allegations, the media—with Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in the lead—have accused the 18 men arrested in the two cities of “stockpiling” weapons and explosives, training in remote locations, planning “violent jihad to cause maximum damage” and discussing “dying for holy war”.

After earlier nominating city landmarks such as the Harbour Bridge as the men’s targets, the police and media have switched to the even more alarming claim of a plot to bomb the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

Meanwhile, the accused have been treated as highly dangerous criminals, locked away for 20 hours a day in isolation cells reserved for convicted prisoners classified as the worst offenders. While awaiting trial, they will be incarcerated for months, denied contact with their families and unable to defend themselves publicly.

When one of the men, Mirsad Mulahalilovic, appeared briefly in a Sydney court to argue unsuccessfully for bail, prison authorities paraded him in a Guantánamo Bay-style orange jumpsuit, with his arms and legs shackled. His barrister Philip Boulten commented: “Corrective Services wishes to emulate Guantánamo Bay.”

Omar Baladjam, who was shot in the neck by police when arrested, was removed from hospital to prison in Sydney’s largest ever “anti-terror” convoy, involving more than 100 heavily-armed police officers, 10 vehicles, patrolling sniffer dogs and two helicopters, one with surveillance cameras.

The purpose of the media coverage goes far beyond demonising the accused, whose prospects of anything resembling a fair trial have been severely compromised. Its aim is, rather, to smother criticism of last week’s politically motivated raids, and to silence opposition to the unprecedented anti-terrorism bills currently being pushed through federal and state parliaments.

In an apparent effort to disguise the weakness of the case against the accused men, the federal Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) initially obtained a suppression order in a Sydney court on November 11, preventing publication of any of the details of the police allegations against them.

Seeking the gag order on behalf of the federal authorities, Wendy Abraham claimed that the media were “approaching witnesses” and hindering the ongoing investigation, without providing any evidence.

Boulten, the defence barrister, described the case against Mulahalilovic as “very flimsy” and denounced the suppression order as “hollow” and “baseless”. He pointed out that the police had been “systematically inviting media on the raids, briefing them, making press statements to them [and] orchestrating a media campaign”.

After the Sydney Morning Herald and other media organisations engaged senior counsel to object to the gag order, the prosecution sought a stay so it could appeal to a higher court. Over the weekend, the Herald editorialised against the ban and senior lawyers denounced it as a step toward secret trials. On November 14, without giving any explanation, the DPP dropped the application, clearing the way for the police fact sheet to be handed to the media.

Led by Murdoch’s outlets, but also joined by the Herald and other Fairfax papers, the media then began selectively quoting from the police allegations and presenting them as facts. It is impossible to verify any of these claims, or predict whether they will stand scrutiny in court, but there have been, at the very least, definite distortions of the truth.

In one instance, police reported seizing several videos in the home raids, including one entitled Are You Ready to Die, by a New York cleric Siraj Wahhaj. This was presented as evidence that the suspects were preparing suicide bombings. The full title of the video, however, available over the Internet, includes the words Preparing for Your Eventual Death by Being the Best Human Being You Can Possibly Be and does not appear to exhort suicide attacks.

In another case, after listing large quantities of seized chemicals, the police noted: “While the information received to date may indicate that the suspects attempted to source materials for the production of TATP [triacetone triperoxide—an explosive], all of the chemicals sourced have other legitimate uses. Acetone, [sulfuric] acid and hydrogen peroxide [can] be used in significant volume by industry and have other common uses.”

Virtually none of the media reported this caveat. Instead, the headlines referred to “stockpiles” of explosives.

Earlier, in what also appeared to be a ham-fisted attempt to bolster the terror allegations and blackguard the accused, the Murdoch media cited anonymous “intelligence sources” saying that an “Islamic supergrass” had assisted the authorities to uncover the “terrorist cells”.

Dubbed “Abu Jihad,” the man was supposed to have “met Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden” and trained in Afghanistan in 2001 with David Hicks, the Australian man who has been held in Guantánamo Bay for almost four years, and John Walker Lindh, an American citizen now serving a 20-year sentence in the United States.

According to the police version of events, it seems that “Abu Jihad” was detained in Egypt for seven months in 2003 before agreeing to cooperate with authorities and being released to return to Australia.

If true, this account makes it likely that his police collaboration and testimony have been obtained by duress, if not outright torture, in Egypt, where the US military is known to illegally “render” detainees for interrogation. Moreover, his role would suggest that he, and possibly other police and ASIO agents, infiltrated the alleged terrorist cells, in which they could have functioned as provocateurs, helping to urge on and entrap the arrested men.

It has since been reported that one of the accused, Khaled Sharrouf, whom police and the media claimed had declared he “wanted to die” in a terrorist attack, was diagnosed as a schizophrenic four years ago and has since been assessed several times as an acute sufferer of hallucinations and other symptoms of distorted reality. Olav Nielssen, a psychiatrist who examined Sharrouf just two months ago, told journalists there was little doubt that his mental illness may have influenced the comments police allege he made about wanting to die.

The police and ASIO are known to rely on the use of undercover agents to set up unstable and troubled Islamic men on terrorist charges. In the only Australian terrorist case to go before a jury, Zek Mallah was acquitted earlier this year after the jurors heard that a police agent posing as a journalist had offered the young man $3,000 for a videotape of him threatening violence against the federal government.

More fundamentally, to the extent that Al Qaeda and other bourgeois Islamic fundamentalist organisations are able to recruit angry and confused individuals to their reactionary perspective, primary responsibility lies with the US and its allies—including the Howard government—and their criminal activities throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. If there is a real danger of a terrorist attack in Australia, the Howard government will be chiefly to blame.

Whatever the exact truth behind the latest claims of a terrorist network, there is no doubt about the political motivations of the highly-orchestrated media campaign. It plays directly into the hands of Prime Minister John Howard and the state Labor leaders.

Murdoch’s Sydney Daily Telegraph editorial of November 15 revealed the underlying agenda. “It is now clear that police will not be accusing the eight Sydney men arrested last week of being just bothersome lads,” it declared. “The allegations have yet to be tested in court and it is vital nothing hinders this process. However, the extent of the prosecution case cannot be ignored and should be kept in mind as the Parliament considers new laws to deal with the threat to our way of life.

“The situation is straightforward: Police and intelligence agencies have asked for changes to existing law and it must be accepted they have not simply posed an ambit claim.”

Thus, while paying lip service to testing the evidence in court, the editorial asserts that the prosecution allegations now render it impossible to question the introduction of new laws that will permit “preventative detention” and prolonged house arrest, without any trial at all.

Last week’s highly-publicised arrests came just as Howard and his state Labor counterparts faced growing condemnation from legal groups, civil liberties organisations, legal academics and newspaper letter writers for trying to push through laws allowing wide-ranging restrictions on political free speech.

The essential thrust of the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2005 is to outlaw expressions of dissent, under conditions where opposition is growing to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, worsening social inequality and attacks on working conditions, social services and democratic rights.

That was underscored this week when Howard and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock defended the Bill’s sedition clauses, rejecting calls for them to be excised from the Bill. The clauses enable people to be jailed for seven years for “urging disaffection” with the government, promoting “feelings of ill-will or hostility between different groups” or urging conduct to assist an “organisation or country engaged in armed hostilities” against the Australian military.

Ruddock and Howard insisted that the provisions remain in the Bill, despite previous vague promises that Ruddock’s department would review them in the New Year. Interviewed on ABC radio, Ruddock conceded that some Vietnam War protesters could have been locked up if similar sedition clauses had existed in the 1960s and 70s.

At the same time, he ludicrously suggested that, since he would be responsible for personally authorising a prosecution for sedition, this would constitute a protection against misuse of the laws. On the contrary, the provisions will place even greater arbitrary power in the hands of a government for which lies and deception have become standard operating procedure.

See Also:
Anger mounts over Australia's anti-terror laws
[10 November 2005]
Howard's terrorist "alert" leads to
Politically manipulated police raids in Australia
[9 November 2005]
Within days of Howard's terror "alert"
Australian government seeks expanded powers to call out troops
[8 November 2005]
Australia's "Anti-Terrorism" Bill: the framework for a police state
[3 November 2005]