| Submit your comments on this article |
| Down Under |
| Extra patrols in Qld as Gold Coast doctor questioned |
| 2007-07-04 |
| SECURITY at tonight's third State of Origin rugby league match in Brisbane and at APEC meetings elsewhere in Queensland will be beefed up following the arrest of Gold Coast-based doctor Mohammed Haneef in connection with terror plots in the United Kingdom. Tens of thousands of people are expected to pack Suncorp Stadium in inner Brisbane for tonight's match. Queensland Police have said there is no specific threat to the match, but police will be out in extra numbers just in case. Extra patrols will also be in force at an APEC 2007 trade ministers' meeting starting in Cairns tomorrow. Australian Federal Police officers have been granted an extra 48 hours to hold Dr Haneef, who was detained at Brisbane international airport for questioning over the car bomb plot in London and the attack on Glasgow airport. AFP commissioner Mick Keelty has said it should be known by then if Dr Haneef - who was arrested as he was preparing to board a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Monday night - will be charged with any offences. "We have had obviously significant time with Dr Haneef. We are hopeful that we'll be able to clarify his situation in the course of the next 48 hours or so," he said on ABC radio. "If we wanted to detain him any longer we would have to go back to the court." Mr Keelty later gave his first hint at the evidence that led to Dr Haneef's arrest. "I know there is speculation in the press about a phone call," he said, adding that there was "a lot more" to it than that. "There is a considerable amount of material that's been provided to us that we are working through." A senior British police officer is heading to Australia to interview Dr Haneef. She will arrive tomorrow. A second doctor questioned yesterday by AFP officers has been released without charge this morning. "This person is now free to go and free to go about his own business, and we should respect his liberty and his privacy," Mr Keelty has said on the Nine Network. Prime Minister John Howard has also stressed that Dr Haneef has not been charged with any crime. "The man has been detained, he has been taken into custody, he has not been charged with any offence," Mr Howard has said. "Until he is - and he may not be, it will depend very much on how the investigations go - it is appropriate to extend to him a presumption of innocence." British police are reported to have requested a speedy extradition of Dr Haneef, amid speculation that he may have been known to Britain's top spy agency MI5 before his arrest. Reports in the UK have said all eight suspects held have appeared on the MI5 database. Seven of those arrested are doctors or trainee doctors while the sole woman among those held - believed to be the wife of another of the suspects - is a laboratory researcher, reports have said. The head of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security, Professor Anthony Glees, said he believed at least one of those arrested was already known to Britain's top spooks and on MI5's database. Security sources quoted in British reports have said their appearances on watchlists shows was to be expected and proves the security services are keeping tabs on the right areas of society. Dr Haneef was appointed registrar at the Gold Coast Hospital at Southport last September after being recruited from a hospital near Liverpool in northern England. He studied in Bangalore. One of the doctors arrested, a 26-year-old man arrested in the northern English city of Liverpool on Sunday, worked at the same hospital as Dr Haneef and the nearby Warrington Hospital. The other doctors arrested reportedly worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, Scotland, and the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent in England. Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has denied national security was being compromised by poor vetting of temporary visas. Mr Ruddock said there had been no "lowering of the bar" in relation to the processing of doctors when they arrived to work in Australia. |
| Posted by:Oztralian |