Howard’s last ditch: a failure called Keelty 

We wish to note the news this week that:

“ ASIO has revealed it “consistently” advised the Howard government it had no evidence connecting Mohamed Haneef to a British terrorist plot, days before the government stripped the Indian doctor of his visa.

In a damning submission to the Clarke inquiry into the handling of the case, the head of the country’s main intelligence agency said it told the government there were no grounds to believe Dr Haneef was linked to, or even knew about, the botched June car bombings. It raises questions about the actions of the then immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, who cancelled the doctor’s visa, and of the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, who has declared there were grounds to treat Dr Haneef as a security risk.

This was on top of similar advice to the AFP nearly three weeks ago:

“ The Queensland Police Service says it told Australia Federal Police (AFP) officers last year there was not enough evidence to charge Dr Mohamed Haneef with supporting a terrorist organisation.

There is now no doubt at all, if there ever was any, that the Haneef affair was Howard’s last ditch attempt at a Tampa Overboard for the 2007 election, aided and abetted by his lapdog, AFP Commissioner Keelty, and the Joke, Kevin Andrews.

More recently,

“ A senior counter-terrorism officer with the Australian Federal Police…testified that police were directed to charge “as many suspects as possible” with terrorism offences in order to test the new anti-terrorism laws introduced in 2003…”At the time we were directed, we were informed, to lay as many charges under the new terrorist legislation against as many suspects as possible because we wanted to use the new legislation,” Mr Lam Paktsun testified.

An AFP spokesperson was asked whether the ASIO statement made Keelty’s position untenable.

The answer is ‘Yes’.

As we said here last November,

“ can there any longer possibly be any question that the appalling, scandal-ridden, utterly discredited and totally compromised Keelty is irredeemably politicised – in fact has offered himself up to the political game by his own choice?

“It’s time for Mick Keelty to resign. Or be sacked…Keelty has to go because of how he thinks about the law…He has to go because everything points to his being utterly politicised and his making decisions on political, not legal, grounds as directed by his [then] masters, the Howard ministry.”

Keelty made, cleverly he probably thought, a Faustian pact with the Devil of Realpolitik. Now he’s been caught out yet again and so we say, yet again:

“Do the decent thing at long last, Mick.”