Friday 29th of March 2024

compare the pair, after major charges in his red notice were dropped...

 

latif

Significant communication problems within domestic spy agency ASIO led to an alleged Egyptian terrorist being cleared for community detention, a report has found.

A report from the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security found ASIO cleared Sayed Abdel Latif, despite the fact he was the subject of an Interpol red notice.

The report found ASIO had information that may have seen it reject the application but it was not used because of a lack of communication.

It described a check conducted at the time as extremely limited.

Despite being cleared for community detention, Abdel Latif instead spent 11 months in a low security centre in the Adelaide Hills before being transferred to the higher security Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney.

The report also found communication problems within the Immigration Department and between the department, ASIO and the Australian Federal Police.

The agencies have all accepted the report's recommendations.

The Interpol notice on Abdel Latif said he had been convicted of murder and terrorism offences in his home country.

Inspector general Vivienne Thom found Abdel Latif volunteered information when he arrived which closely matched that of a man sought by Interpol since 2001 for belonging to an extremist organisation and for a range of violence offences.

Immigration, the AFP and ASIO all knew of the notice, the report found.

"The details provided should have alerted agencies to the fact that his case presented complex security issues," the report stated.

Potential threat to national security

The report also says the AFP did not pass on information about the original conviction in Egypt, and that while Immigration found the family should be allowed to apply for protection, a brief to that effect was probably "misplaced" in the Minister's office.

Dr Thom notes there were high workloads and demands in the various agencies, which goes some way to explaining the problems.

"The potential for harm to national security that could have been caused by these problems did not materialise," the report stated.

"However, such an outcome is not assured for other complex security cases."

In June, Interpol removed the murder conviction and additional firearm charges from its notice on Abdel Latif.

But he is still listed as having been convicted of belonging to a banned terrorist organisation.

Abdel Latif, who arrived on Christmas Island with his family in May 2012 and remains in Villawood, has denied that he is a member of any extremist organisation.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-14/egyptian-terrorism-suspect-held-in-low-security-report-finds/5320104

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A breakdown in communication between immigration officials, Asio and the federal police that could have had serious national security consequences has been revealed in a report that raises serious questions about procedural fairness in the case of an Egyptian asylum seeker Tony Abbott labelled as a “convicted jihadi terrorist”.

Abbott last year, while opposition leader, called Sayed Abdellatif a “convicted jihadist terrorist”. In 1999 Abdellatif was convicted in a mass trial of 107 people. A red notice issued by Interpol said he had been convicted of murder and explosives possession. Interpol dropped these claims after an extensive investigation by Guardian Australia, leaving just two non-violent convictions on the red notice.

An inquiry by the inspector general of intelligence and security into the case of Abdellatif – now detained in Australia – found systemic failures. Its report highlights extraordinary levels of miscommunication, including a major breakdown within Asio.

The inquiry was commissioned by the former prime minister Julia Gillard after Abdellatif’s case was raised by the Coalition in parliament to argue that Labor had made Australia “less safe”.

The inquiry report says that despite all three agencies being aware of the possibility that Abdellatif was the subject of an Interpol red notice for serious convictions, no co-ordinated response was initiated. Asio refused to assist the Immigration Department in determining Abdellatif’s identity when questions about the red notice were raised in 2012.

“Overall there was a lack of co-ordination, a duplication of effort and a lack of urgency in obtaining information about whether a person in immigration detention potentially matched a national security alert,” the inspector general, Vivienne Thom, writes.

The report makes clear that Abdellatif subsequently proved not to be a national security threat but expresses concerns that the breakdown in communication could have serious implications in other cases. “The potential for harm to national security that could have been caused by these problems did not materialise,” it says, “however, such an outcome is not assured for other complex security cases.”

The report notes a catalogue of failings throughout the handling of Abdellatif’s case and criticises record keeping. Much of the information in the Immigration Department “resided in emails in personal drives and there were inadequate corporate records of key decisions”. The report also states that “key procedures and agreements” between the department and Asio “were not well documented”.

The report highlights the tensions between the department and the Australian federal police when they were seeking to tie Abdellatif to the red notice. The AFP became aware that the man listed the red notice was “likely to be identical with” Abdellatif in January 2013 but did not inform the department of this until 20 February that year.

The report says the AFP was handed court documents in November 2012 that showed Abdellatif had been acquitted of the major convictions listed on the red notice but it took until April 2013 for the AFP to “partially” translate these documents. They were not passed to Asio or the Immigration Department.

This revelation raises serious questions about why the AFP did not disclose information about the contested nature of Abdellatif’s convictions during a Senate estimates hearing in May 2013 when his case was discussed.

Despite the AFP liaising with authorities in Egypt, neither the Australian Department for Foreign Affairs nor the attorney general were asked for advice about the nature of the alleged convictions.

The report states that Abdellatif consistently complied with questioning from the AFP and did not withhold information about his past.

He was originally transferred to community detention but in April 2013 was transferred to high-security detention in Villawood, Sydney, just days before the media reported his case. The report highlights that at this point Asio still refused to aid the investigation and that a ministerial briefing on the transfer prepared in February was not handed to the minister until April.

The Asio approval process for community detention is also criticised. “Within Asio there was a disconnect between what the senior executive had approved as a process of checks, what operational staff understood, and what actually happened. There was inadequate guidance for Asio staff.”

The report says the senior immigration official who approved this transfer had not seen the Interpol red notice nor the AFP’s advice on it.

The inspector general also says Abdellatif’s state of detention should have been reviewed after the major charges in his red notice were dropped. Abdellatif remains in detention in Villawood, separated from his wife and children.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/sayed-abdellatif-inquiry-finds-potentially-dangerous-failings

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Basically, Sayed Abdel Latif should not have been placed in maximum security... Abbott was playing the hypocritical devil when he said that having Sayed Abdel Latif in low level accommodation was making Australia less safe. Julia Gillard did not formulate an opinion based on false premise, unlike our Turd-in-Chief who deliberately does — to confuse issues and blame others than himself — for populism enlargement.

 

 

more tortuous torture...

Sayed Abdellatif’s horizons are low already, and narrowing still.

Where once he could wave to his family through a wire fence, he has been told by guards – without explanation – that the behaviour was a security risk and prohibited.

Now the only time he has with his wife and six children are the crowded hours spent in the overfull and noisy visitors’ area of Villawood detention centre in Sydney; a cavernous and impersonal room where guards wearing black vests and body cameras with listening devices quietly loiter to electronically eavesdrop on conversations. His children must wear brightly coloured wristbands to see him. The wristbands mean they can leave. His wrists are bare.

Abdellatif has watched hundreds of asylum seekers pass through and out of detention: granted bridging visas, protection visas, some deported. He has seen people set themselves on fire in detention, hang themselves and stab each other. Sniffer dogs invade rooms without notice seeking out drugs.

Abdellatif doesn’t count the days – 1,643 – he has been in held immigration detention. He knows broadly it is four-and-a-half years and he knows he remains no closer to a resolution of his case than the day he arrived in Australia.

In that time, he has seen four Australian prime ministers come and go. He follows politics closely and jokes darkly he may see many more. He has not been charged, nor accused of any crime in Australia.

His detention has been condemned by the UN human rights council as illegal, a “clearly disproportionate... deprivation of liberty” from which he should be released and for which he should be compensated; excoriated by the Australian Human Rights Commission as “arbitrary ... and unjustified”; and criticised by the Australian government’s own inspector general of intelligence and security for its “lack of coordination and … urgency”.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has assessed that Abdellatif and his family have a prima facie case for protection on the basis of a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their homeland.

Four times the department has recommended to successive ministers that he be allowed apply for a protection visa. He remains in detention.

Now, new documents obtained under freedom of information legislation reveal the government has known for nearly 18 months that the evidence used to convict Abdellatif in absentia in a mass show trial in Egypt in 1999 – the basis for his detention in Australia – was obtained “under severe torture” and is discredited.

A briefing paper read and signed by the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, in April 2015, two months after a Guardian story, states documents in possession of the department “raise concerns about the legitimacy of the trial”.

“Translations of supreme military court documents and signed statements from witnesses indicate that the evidence used against Mr Abdellatif in the Egyptian trial was obtained under torture.”

But the same document also shows the immigration department seeking to assure the immigration minister that Abdellatif can still be kept in detention without charge or trial, regardless of the legitimacy of his claim for protection.

Department officials recommended that Abdellatif be allowed to apply for a visa, so that it could then be denied to him and the process used to force him out of Australia.

“If Mr Abdellatif was permitted to lodge a valid TPV [temporary protection visa] application, it would be refused as he would not meet the criterion in the new subsection 36(1B) of the [migration] act (which refuses a visa to anyone judged by Asio to be directly or indirectly a risk to security).”

An asylum seeker cannot legally be removed from Australia before their claim for protection is assessed. Therefore, bureaucrats argue to the minister in the briefing, allowing Abdellatif to apply for a visa, only to then reject it, “provides the strongest basis for effecting removal as it reduces the risk of successful litigation and, therefore, is the proposed mechanism to assess Mr Abdellatif’s claims”.

The briefing contemplates approaching Egypt – the only country of which Abdellatif is a citizen or has a right to enter but also the country from which he seeks protection from persecution – to ask that country to request his extradition.

Egypt has made no effort to reclaim its citizen and the briefing notes “securing adequate diplomatic assurances cannot be guaranteed ... until thorough consideration has been given to Mr Abdellatif’s security concerns and his specific claims including the risk of harm on return to Egypt”.

On 19 May 2015, the immigration minister granted the Abdellatif family leave to apply for temporary protection visas in Australia.

Abdellatif undertook 22 hours of interviews over four days with department officials in February and March 2016 but nearly a year later is no closer to finding out the outcome of his application.

Abdellatif has no recourse to any appeal while he is detained and while his case remains before the department. It has barely progressed, save for the growing mountain of paperwork that only serves to confirm the Kafka-esque stalemate he is in.

A spokesman for Asio – the agency that gave Abdellatif an “adverse security assessment” on the basis of the flawed Egyptian trial – told the Guardian: “Consistent with long standing practice, Asio does not comment on individuals.”

A spokeswoman said the department “does not comment on individual cases”.

Exile and detention

Abdellatif fled Egypt in 1992, having been tortured under the regime of Hosni Mubarak. In that year, he was arrested from a mosque by the state security investigations service as part of a crackdown on Islamic political opposition to Mubarak’s rule. Since fleeing his homeland, he has remained in exile from his country, living as a refugee in Albania, the UK, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia and – finally – Australia. All of his six children were born during that exile.

Abdellatif and his family arrived in Australia by boat in May 2012. The Australian government assessed his claim for protection and found that he and his family had a prima facie claim to refugee status.

Read More:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/26/australian-government-conc...

 

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