How Haneef chatted his way into Aussie terror radar

New Delhi: While charges against Indian doctor Mohammad Haneef may have been dropped, but the Australian government still maintains he was in the know of the failed UK terror plot.

Australia's Immigration Minister on Tuesday released some of the police evidence on which he had based his decision to cancel Haneef's work visa.

The evidence included mostly transcripts of an Internet chat between Haneef and his brother Shoaib on the day he tried to leave Brisbane

In the transcript, Shoaib is reported to have told Haneef that nothing had been “found about him.” Shoaib then asks Haneef as to when he (Haneef) would be “getting out”, to which Haneef replied “today.”

Shoaib then advised Haneef to tell his employers at the Gold Coast Hospital that he was leaving to see his new-born daughter and will disclose nothing else.

Shoaib also told Haneef not to delay his departure or lend his phone to anyone in Australia. In his chat, he also indicated that Kafeel had been using Haneef's SIM card in a project in the UK

For the police, that was a suspicious sounding chat. For Andrews, that was enough to suggest that Haneef had prior knowledge about the terror plots.

“AFP investigators consider Haneef’s departure from Australia on a one-way ticket for a purpose that appears to be highly suspicious and may reflect Haneef’s awareness of the conspiracy to plan and prepare the acts of terrorism in London and Glasgow,” Andrews said.

But in Bangalore, Haneef's cousin Imran Siddiqui dismissed the revelation as insignificant. He said Haneef explained the chat to the police and demanded that those interrogation records be also made public.

Siddiqui says Andrews is now indulging in political posturing, suggesting that the John Howard government is trying to save face in an election year in Australia.

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