Dale Mills
The charges against the terrorist suspects have nothing to do with the terror legislation that was rushed through parliament on November 3. Rather, the legislation gives the police greater scope to lay charges.
According to the director of the terrorism and law project at the University of NSW, Andrew Lynch, quoted in the November 10 Sydney Morning Herald, the offenses the terror suspects in Melbourne were charged with related to being a member of a terrorist organisation, or directing such an organisation, and these laws have been on the books for years.
Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said the Sydney men will be charged with preparing for a terrorist act, a charge that was not available a week before the arrests. However, Lynch said, "The offence of doing any act in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act has been in the [federal criminal code] for the last few years". The recent change to the law, he said, simply gives "the police a wider scope in laying charges".
The Victorian and NSW Labor premiers and senior police claim that they thwarted a terrorist attack. Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said that police had disrupted "probably the most serious preparation for a terrorist attack that we have seen in Australia". NSW police minister Carl Scully said, "I am satisfied that this state was under an imminent threat of a potentially catastrophic terrorist act".
Rob Stary, lawyer for eight of the nine men arrested in Melbourne, criticised the politicians and police chiefs for all but trying and sentencing the suspects. He told the November 10 Age: "There is no presumption of innocence ... these people are presumed guilty."
Stary said that his clients have not been charged with a weapons offence, conspiracy charges or any of the raft of possible terrorism charges. Instead, they have been charged with "membership of an organisation, not even one of the government's proscribed organisations, just membership of an unspecified organisation". He added that there was nothing to suggest that the men, who were in the same prayer group, were involved in an imminent terror attack.
No-one knows the strength of the evidence against the accused. One of the suspects, Mirsad Mulahalilovic, has been accused of plotting to make a bomb because he had bought plastic piping and chemicals. His defence lawyer, Phillip Boulten, said the charges were based on "marginal evidence", and that there was no suggestion the materials would be used for terrorism.
Two lawyers for the suspects have complained of the conditions in which their clients are being held. Solicitor Adam Houda has accused police of holding his clients in "shameful" conditions. Boulten said Mulahalilovic was being kept in solitary confinement and that his hands and legs were shackled. He also said that Mulahalilovic had been dressed in orange overalls.
Meanwhile, the media hysteria around the arrests has forced a postponement to January 30, 2006 of the trial of terrorist suspect Joseph Terrence 'Jack' Thomas. Victorian Supreme Court Justice Philip Cummins said on November 10 that the atmosphere created by the press had become "oppressive", criticising a comment by the NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney, who told the media "we have disrupted the final stages of a large-scale attack".
Thomas, 32, has pleaded not guilty to charges of receiving money from a terrorist organisation, providing resources to a terrorist organisation to help plan a terrorist act and a passport-related offence. Lex Lasry, QC, said it was impossible for Thomas, his client, to get a fair trial.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, November 23, 2005.
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