Sarah Stephen
On April 26, Prime Minister John Howard restated to A Current Affair that his greatest fear for 2004 is a terrorist attack in Australia. But in reality, Howard's biggest fear is that Australia doesn't become a terrorist target, that no terrorist cells are uncovered, and that they don't find people to jail on charges of terrorism.
The Howard government needs a terrorist attack — or a percieved threat of one — to sow the sort of widespread fear and mistrust that could be the Coalition's only hope of getting re-elected.
The Bali bombing didn't scare people sufficiently, and no Jemaah Islamiya terrorists were ever found in Australia. After a series of raids on Indonesian Australians, no charges were ever laid.
Last November the Murdoch press told us that French national Willie Brigitte had planned to bomb the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. This was later revealed as merely the product of an ASIO brainstorm of worst-case scenarios. The sensationalist reporting of Brigitte's links to a "terror cell" and "sleeper agents" was solely based on a "classified" dossier produced by French anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
Then on April 15, Izhar ul-Haque, a 21-year-old fourth-year medical student at the University of NSW, was charged with training with the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) organisation. On April 22, Faheem Khalid Lodhi was charged with preparing a terrorist act.
These were the first arrests to be made under Australian anti-terrorism legislation since the 1978 Hilton bombing. The two men await trial in the high-security section of Goulburn jail.
Within two hours of ul-Haque's arrest, federal politicians began commenting to the press. Foreign minister Alexander Downer told Sunday Sunrise on April 18 that it "gives the public confidence that our agencies are doing a good job". He praised the arrest, asserting that "this is exactly what the federal police should be doing, making absolutely sure that people are properly protected in this country".
In an opinion piece printed in the April 20 Sydney Morning Herald, former president of the Islamic Society of UNSW Dr Mohammed Waleed Kadous condemned ul-Haque's arrest. He wrote: "The only allegation made is that he trained with an organisation in January last year, which was not even a proscribed terrorist 'group' until 10 months later, a group that terrorism expert Clive Williams says 'would be unlikely to be interested itself in terrorist activities in Australia'. There has not even been a suggestion that ul-Haque was involved in, or was planning any kind of terrorist activity."
Proscription is designed to outlaw organisations deemed a threat to national security. The only thing linking LeT with Australia is material from Bruguiere's dossier, which claimed that Brigitte trained with LeT and was then "ordered to Australia". The April 23 Australian misrepresented as Brigitte's confession an allegation from Bruguiere's dossier that an LeT group in Sydney was "preparing a large-scale terrorist attack in Australia".
Until 2001, LeT, a Sunni Islamic group operating in Kashmir to liberate the region from India, was backed by the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence services. After 9/11, Pakistan was pressured to ban the organisation, as have a number of Western countries.
It has been an offence in Australia since March 2002 to fund or resource LeT, but its proscription in December also made it an offence to train with, recruit for, belong to or otherwise support LeT. LeT was proscribed almost nine months after ul-Haque is alleged to have trained with them. A government source admitted to the April 17 SMH that this could make his prosecution more difficult.
Ul-Haque's lawyer Adam Houda told the April 18 Melbourne Age: "We are unimpressed by [Attorney General Philip] Ruddock and Downer utilising ... my client's arrest to gain cheap political points. A message to the Howard government: please don't use my client's case as a vehicle for your election campaign. This is a young man's life you are destroying."
After 34-year-old Lodhi, a Pakistani Australian, appeared on April 22 in Sydney's Central Local Court, the April 23 SMH declared — incorrectly — that he had been charged with "seven terrorist offences". Lodhi was charged with making a false statement to ASIO, and using a false name to buy a mobile phone and to inquire about the price of chemicals. These are not terrorist offences.
A former colleague from the Sydney architecture firm where Lodhi worked told the April 24 Age that Lodhi often accessed satellite images from a NSW department of planning website during office hours. "On numerous occasions he was remarking how the satellite images took snapshots of buildings. I said 'Why would you need to know that information?' He said he was just looking at it for property purchase purposes." The colleague added that Lodhi "talked excessively" about where he could get chemicals for his family in Pakistan.
In October, Lodhi lodged an inquiry with Deltrex Chemicals about the availability of urea nitrate, a component of commercial fertiliser which is explosive in large quantities. ASIO assumed he planned to use it to make a bomb, but Lodhi argues he was inquiring on behalf of his family, who own a tanning business in Pakistan.
Lodhi's lawyer Stephen Hopper told ABC Radio's AM program on April 23: "I think there's enough reasonable doubt to fill a truck. Anyone can have suspicious circumstances ... but you've got to be able to join the dots, and my view is that they can't join the dots." Arguing that the evidence is circumstantial, he added that "one would think there is an election in the air".
Lodhi's unit was raided in October and his Australian and Pakistani passports seized. Ul-Haque's passports were seized in November. If these were such dangerous men, why did ASIO spend six months undertaking surveillance before the two were charged?
Speaking to the April 25 SMH, Hopper argued that in the current climate any jury hearing his client's case would be biased, prejudicing Lodhi's right to a fair trial. "If Mr Hopper wins that argument when Lodhi's hearing comes up, he could get a permanent stay of proceedings and Lodhi would not go to trial", the article claimed.
All the corporate media outlets are complicit in their role of amplifying the government's fear agenda and whipping up the terrorist bogey. Fairfax journalist Brendan Nicholson, in an April 24 Age article titled "Can our spies come in from the cold?", made the stunningly baseless prediction: "Evidence to be produced at their trials will paint a chilling picture of an attempt by an al-Qaeda-connected terrorist group to lay the groundwork for a bloodbath in Australia."
2001 was the Tampa election. 2004 may well turn out to be the terror election — a campaign manufactured to play on people's concerns and fears by a government desperate to maintain a hold on office.
In the months leading up to the election, we can expect to see anyone who had anything to do with Willie Brigitte hauled before the courts, complete with wild allegations of bombings and mayhem. Don't be surprised if some are wrongly imprisoned, and don't expect to hear public apologies as people are quietly released without charge months later.
Further attacks on civil liberties and an escalation in anti-Muslim racism can also be expected. ASIO has already alluded to the next target, leaking to the April 17 Australian that two men under the scrutiny of authorities are "a Lebanese taxi driver and a Bangladeshi butcher".
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, May 5, 2004.
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