The Australian
Civil libertarian concerns are misplaced
CONTRARY to opinion in some quarters, bleeding-heart naivety and soft-headed stupidity are not virtues, especially in terror prevention. The sooner Australia's misguided civil libertarians understand this, the safer their fellow citizens will be. Law enforcement agencies ASIO, the Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police deserve congratulations for the success of Operation Pendennis. After gathering 16,400 hours of electronic surveillance and bugging 98,000 telephone calls, seven defendants, including radical cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, have been convicted of being part of a terror cell. Despite evidence uncovered of plans to attack the 2005 AFL Grand Final at the MCG or Melbourne's Crown casino during Grand Prix week in 2006, the trial has drawn bizarre reactions from some who are well enough educated to know better.
Rob Stary, who represented seven of the men, claimed the fact that four were acquitted showed "they are casting the net too wide". A more rational interpretation might be that the acquittals showed due process worked and delivered justice. The Australian, especially in its coverage of the botched Mohamed Haneef investigation, has been a stickler for due process to maintain public confidence in the laws. It was upheld in this trial.
Sounding like an ingenuous student, Liberty Victoria president Julian Burnside QC condemned anti-terror laws after the trial for their impact on "minority groups". The vast majority of good Australian Muslims want terrorism stopped as much as, if not more than, their fellow citizens. Mr Burnside also claimed the laws "criminalise conduct most people would not regard as criminal at all, including words said or views held which never result in any actual harm to anyone".
Greg Barns, who defended Ezzit Raad, pointed to "a world of difference between preparing to act and acting, and merely thinking and talking". Such cavalier thinking beggars belief. Every week, criminals go to jail for such crimes such as conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to commit fraud, without actually murdering or defrauding anyone. In such cases, it is the evidence of intention that matters.
Pushed to its logical conclusion, Mr Barns's argument implies that anti-terror laws should not be invoked until terrorist acts are unleashed. This would be as unacceptable to the vast majority of Australians as his client Raad's recorded statement that it was a pity more people had not died in the 2005 London terrorist bombings. Raad was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist organisation and of making funds available to it.
After the World Trade Centre attacks and the Bali bombings, critics of the security services were quick to blame intelligence failures in preventing the attacks. In relation to September 11, the criticisms later proved valid as it emerged that some of the perpetrators had been known to authorities for years. In Australia in 2004, concerns over perceived intelligence failures in the lead-up to the Bali bombings prompted the then ALP Opposition, the Greens and the Democrats to demand judicial inquiries.
Despite such concerns, the exemplary intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the Melbourne terror trial, preventing preparation of a terrorist act that may have killed and maimed innocent people, has left parts of the Left upset. As Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman argues: "Predictably, a number of civil libertarians, academics and legal figures who have vilified those who predicted such a development since the 9/11 bombings and the Islamist attacks against civilians in Bali and the West, have continued their attacks on the legal system which enabled these men to be held, tried and convicted."
Such clouded thinking by the Left is nothing new. In February, Amnesty International's main concern about the trial was that the men had been denied bail. Yesterday, The Age's main concern was a front-page claim they had been "mistreated". During the trial, defence claims of terrifying "Nazi tactics" by authorities and suggestions that members of the alleged cell were too stupid and inept to be terrorists were also unconvincing. Unlike the bosses of Jemaah Islamiah and al-Qa'ida, many of those who perpetrate terror attacks are easily-led dupes.
Despite the controversies, Australia's largest terrorist trial and the investigation that led to it nailed a home-grown terrorist cell plotting to wage violent jihad on Australians. That justice was done, and seen to be done, reaffirmed the value of the anti-terror laws, properly implemented.
Thanks Ronit Fraid
2 comments:
This piece in the Australian is possibly one of the best written in recent years. It is a matter of established fact that the security authorities and ASIO in particular, have for very complex reasons, found themselves working in a hostile constituency. Indeed, the cases of Haneef and ul-Haque are regularly trotted out as examples of failure, ineptitude or worse, a police state mentality.
Operation Pendennis was skillfully executed to the point where prosecutions were achieved. However, we should all remember that this is the first major terrorist trial in Australia and by and large, voters in the civil libertarian movement and the legal profession mentioned in the Australian are in the majority.
The major conundrum facing any police or intelligence operation involving terrorism, assassination or murder is that by definition, the initiative will always lies with the perpetrators. It means the authorities have to play a dangerous game of catch-up. If they are successful, then the likes of those who act in the interests of suspects, just like Rob Stary, Julian Burnside QC and the eponymous Greg Barns, appeared to follow a script noted in several cases overseas.
That is to attempt to denigrate witnesses for the prosecution and depict them as avaricious, mentally unbalanced and unsound. One such witness in the Melbourne trial was successfully labeled as such by the presiding judge, who regarded his evidence as unreliable. It would be harder to denigrate in a similar way a highly trained police infiltrator. Not that would stop the bleeding hearts from trying!
The Australian was correct in its assessment that carried to its logical conclusion, Mr Barn's argument implies that terrorist rules should not be invoked until a terrorist act is about to take place. In the huffing and puffing that went on before, during and after the trial, those who should've known better, often the proposition that the suspects were merely talking. Personally, I wonder had it been a plot to blow up the criminal court in Melbourne or the High Court in Canberra, whether these legal eagles would have been as sanguine.
We are still low on the learning curve in dealing with terrorism. Not all Muslims are terrorists but it would appear that terrorists are usually Islamic fundamentalists and converts. Stary, Burnside, Taft, Barns et al appear to have lost sight of some of the targets discussed. The Westgate Bridge in Melbourne and the MCG on Grand Final day are quintessentially Australian targets of opportunity. For pretty obvious reasons, I would not list other targets but rocket science is not involved. Terrorists inevitably look for sites that symbolic or totemic and in circumstances where a massive casualties would ensue - consider the Sydney Harbour Bridge and work from there.
Unfortunately, the rotten fruit of multiculturalism is that this country has a viable population from which terrorists can draw support. We have in our midst, jihadists and their sympathizers. And however, much scorn was poured upon the Howard Government's fridge magnet and hot line, the fact remains that ASIO and the other authorities received crucial information, which enabled them to act and prevent an atrocity.
A friend of mine who knows a little about terrorism and writes on the subject quite regularly holds the view that Australians will only take terrorism seriously when a news flash interrupts a football telecast or an event like the Melbourne cup. I hope he is wrong. However, he has also made the point that there is a critical moment in any anti-terrorist operation, when a command decision has to be made. Act precipitately and you wind up with a great deal of intelligence which does not automatically translate into evidence; the "smoking gun variety" of which prosecutors dream. On the other hand, following Barn's "logic" could mean acting one minute too late and the consequences could be catastrophic.
Just for once, really for the first time, an Australian newspaper has had the guts to print an opinion which congratulates all those involved in an antiterrorist operation. Furthermore, it has shown courage and resolve in lambasting woolly-minded nit-pickers, who condemn the police on one hand and in the event of an atrocity would be in the forefront of critics demanding the heads of those responsible for the failure to nip a terrorist plot in the bud.
Appreciate your articulate comments-please keep reading-all the best-doc
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