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Melbourne terror trial sets a very scary precedent
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For Robert McClelland, the Benbrika case represents Australia’s “most successful terror prosecution”. But that very much depends on what you mean. Most media reports imply that the conviction of seven men in Melbourne means that the police prevented terror attacks against targets ranging from the Westgate Bridge to the Grand Final. But that’s not what the court found at all. After all, it’s an offence under common law to attempt a crime, and has been for hundreds of years. These men were not charged with attempting bombings or murders. They were convicted under John Howard’s anti-terrorist laws. Mick Keelty explains:
That seemingly trivial amendment (from “the” to “a”) meant that the prosecution didn’t need to prove any involvement in a specific act of terror. Benbrika, for instance, was found guilty of being a member of a terrorist organisation, directing the activities of a terrorist organisation and possessing a thing in connection with preparation for a terrorist act. You might conclude that Benbrika and his friends had joined al Qaeda or a similar group, an organisation with defined aims and members. In fact, the terrorist organisation was simply the men themselves. As for the “things” that Benbrika possessed, they weren’t bombs or guns but videos and documents about overseas groups or about terrorism in general. That was what the case involved. The men talked about terrorism. They read books about it; they looked at terrorist snuff videos; they discussed the theological ramifications of martyrdom. But they didn’t actually do anything themselves. Insofar as specific targets were raised in the trial, most of them came from Izzydeen Atik, the defendant who pleaded guilty. It was Atik who claimed Benbrika wanted to attack the MCG and Crown Casino. But Atik was mentally ill and believed he could talk to birds, and the judge specifically warned the jury that Atik was a conman, liar and a fraud. On the police recordings, Benbrika and his friends say lots of nasty things. They discuss martyrdom and revenge killings, and Benbrika says he wants to damage lives and damage property. But it’s all incredibly amorphous. The Herald Sun’s headline about “West Gate Bridge bomb plot”, for instance, rests upon a recording of Fadl Sayadi explaining that it might be possible to destroy the bridge if you snorkeled underneath and planted what he described as “thingos” underneath. Sayadi didn’t have any “thingos” and neither did any of the other men. The only explosives referred to in the trial belonged to an undercover police officer codenamed SIO39, who invited Benbrika to come with him into the bush to detonate bombs. As Keelty says, McClelland’s successful prosecution depended on the new logic embodied in the anti-terrorism legislation, a logic that substantially eroding the traditional insistence that a crime depended on both a guilty intention and a guilty act. Think about it in a different context. Imagine a group of junkies who decide they’d like to sell drugs rather than buy them. They read internet sites about making speed and they talk about the merits of bringing smack in by ship and by plane. If a wiretap picks up their mutterings about commercial quantities of heroin, should the law treat them as if they were already Mr Bigs? If drug dealing seems less serious than terrorism, try a different example. In a high school, a group of bullied misfits listen to grindcore, read books about serial killers and talk to each other about shooting their schoolyard tormenters. Say a teacher overhears them. The kids’ profile seems similar to that of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. So should they be treated as if they’d already conducted a Columbine massacre? School and workplace massacres are just as horrible as terrorist attacks (and probably far more likely). But we’d never apply the logic of the anti-terror laws in those settings. It might be hard to muster much sympathy for Benbrika. But if we allow men to spend decades in gaol for acts that they might have committed in the future, we’re establishing a very scary precedent. |
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19 Comments
Melinda, if we avoided doing everything that might be used in jihadist propaganda then we would only succeed in making ourselves defenceless and ruin the worth and value of our society. Even then the jihadist propaganda would not stop.
Laws against criminal conspiracies have always been part of our society’s defences against criminals. The idea that we should only move against terrorists after they have committed their atrocity beggars belief.
I didn’t think it possible that anyone could believe that counselling would-be-terrorists was an adequate response but you have proved me wrong.
I thought we’d done away with this stuff when the corrupt Consorting Squad in NSW was ditched along with the odious “consorting laws” where a convicted criminal could be arrested and banged up just for having a drink in the pub with another convicted crim on the dubious claim they coud be plotting further crimes.
If my memory serves me correctly, the Hilton Hotel bombing case involved police using an informant who was somewhat unstable and unreliable. That got several innocent people banged up for a long time. Is this another one of those kinds of “successes” ?
What an odd article.
Comparing junkies to terrorists ? Ummm…didn’t see too much crystal meth on the streets when New York. London & Madrid were bombed.
Melinda - would you be willing to test your approach & try to get some western hostages released from the middle east ? I think you may find warm/fuzzy sentiment won’t cut it with the folk that like filming & watching infidel beheadings.
JamesK: I apologize for picking on you. It wasn’t personal. It’s just that I found Jeff Sparrow’s article to be very unsettling. If he is correct in what he says then the whole thing looks very like a put up job. Something which has been part of the Oz scene since the time of the Howard government, and if Rudd’s minders aren’t quicker to pick up this sort of thing. Then where to Australia?
Thanks for the answers to my questions. Although I found them to be opaque.
Also of interest were your comments about William Smith O’Brien.
It seems like a case of ‘Read Crikey and Learn’.
David I am a lawyer by training and case officer by profession I deal in facts not propaganda. You present no facts to back up your assertions.
At home we have a saying about law cases presented in the press read the judgement think about it then form an opinion. Then talk about it.
David Sanderson is 100% correct.
This not ‘Minority Report’ by proxy whereby they are just guilty for thinking about it but it probably wouldn’t have happened and even if it did it would have been half-arsed. They are not just youthful religious zealots or ‘naughty boys’.
Jeff Sparrow’s pandering to some perceived liberal sacred cow is both apologist and fallacious. It is just the sort of woolly failure of personal responsibility that Christopher Hitchens quite appropriately lambastes.
dermot
You’re right . I did confuse the two titles. However, it is true that the Church did not allow to touch some parts of the body; people were not allowed to wash the intimate parts, which, I agree, was not part of Catholic teaching. (policy?)
But my problem is that what shall we do when we get a wrong person? And how many ‘wrong persons’ are we allowed to catch and mistreat before we catch the ‘right one’? Dr. Haneef comes to mind.
The Soviet Gulags were full of ‘western sympatisers’.
In Tasmania’s Port Arthur penal colony site, there is a small shack separate from the main prison which housed the Irish prisoners. These men had participated in the Irish uprising and had contributed FREE SPEECH to the non-lethal debate which often occurs during a time of war. Simply making their voice and words heard was viewed as a terrorist act by the Crown. Men such as William Smith O’Brien were charged with terrorist offences for speaking in public, tried and convicted with the end result of being transported halfway around the world to serve a life sentence in the colony. “I have done only that which in my opinion, it was the duty of every Irishman to have done.” Those words are today still on display at Port Arthur having been penned by O’Brien over 160 years ago. How prophetic. On the other hand, if these people from Melbourne were citizens of China or Russia or Iraq or Iran or Saudi Arabia or Zimbabwe or Indonesia or Afganistan or Pakistan or India, what would have been their sentence? Death, no doubt, and done quickly too. No appeal and no mercy. I take heart from those convicted Irish men laying in unmarked graves on the Isle of the Dead.
Glenn Brandham, William Smith O’Brien was a baronet, a Protestant member of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, educated in the best public schools in England.
He was a landowner, unusual in that he lived on his own land whilst the majority were absentee landowners living in England.
He was a leader in the fight for Catholic Irish emancipation.
He was a leader and fighter in the rebellion of 1848.
He was a hero fighting oppression of a people and a religion that were really not, culturally his own, but with whom he wished live in peaceful harmony with simply as a fellow Irishmen free and proud and also with, it should be noted, freedom of religious expression.
He would doubtless be turning in his grave with your abuse of his good name.
I know I find it repulsive.
You arrogant ignorant tosser
Why are you picking on me Venise? I’m one of the ‘good guys’!
1. its under the auspices of the criminal code that they were charged and found guilty
2.When the Gestapo found out they had ‘been very naughty boys’
3.When the stitches unravel
4. no….er maybe yes…maybe no…… no definitely no!
In “Animal Farm’ the institution was called ‘thought police’ or ‘police of thought’.
In the Dark Ages people sinned with their thought, words and even with their senses. In Australia, under the Howard government we had a very nice combination of the two.
shane wrong novel it was 1984 not animal farm. in the so called dark ages (the pre-mediaeval or early mediaeval periods to give it its proper name) soon was as in Christian theology to this very day thought by word and by deed not by the senses. Check facts
Unlike JamesK who has sailed out, rhetoric blazing. Armed with personal insults, which achieve nothing. . I am in ignorance of the anti-terrorist law. But I do see where you are coming from. I’d just like you to answer a couple of questions (I hope that, unlike Mungo MacCallum, who doesn’t deign to explain, you may be able to answer them. 1) What would their sentences, if found guilty, have been, under common law? (I must admit if they had succeeded in blowing up a VFL Grand Final, I would have been rendered speechless with awe). 2) At what point should the Gestapo have decided the threats should have been seen as leading to a terrorist act? Or the school misfits suddenly be perceived to be about to act? 3) At what point does a witnesses’ story, a man who has ‘turned State’s evidence’ be perceived to have gone completely over-the-top with embroidered speculation? 4) Are you saying the defendants were virtually being tried because of their race?
However ignorant my questions, I would like you to answer them.
Sincerely
Venise
It is clear that this group considered itself to be a jihadi or terrorist cell. It does not matter that they were not formally ‘accredited’ with Al Qaeda or anyone else - many other terrorists are also not accredited in this way. Al Qaeda does not operate like Rotary International.
The fact that their plans were not as ‘professional’ as they could have been does not hide their fundamental intent and planning to commit mass murder. To say they should have been treated the same as a bunch of disturbed schoolboys is to presumably say they ought to have been offered some heavy duty counselling combined with a stern warning never to be so silly again. The false analogy is a big part of Sparrow’s mental furniture and it is about as solid as a DIY chair from K-Mart.
The larger point is that this is all part and parcel of Sparrow’s crude version of Marxism and its dogmatic ramblings about the supposed oppressiveness of the modern liberal capitalist state. Some might think it is heroic that he is trying to revive a dead ideology. I think it is pathetic and almost, but not quite, beyond derision.
David, I think you’re wrong when you say they were charged for “planning to commit mass murder”. JamesK is on the money when he says it was “under the auspices of the criminal code that they were charged and found guilty” of, basically, wanting to commit mass murder, and being prepared to say so.
Dermot, if you believe Sparrow has accurately portrayed the case against these men then you are, unfortunately, very vulnerable to distorted propaganda.
shane i agree. what people think in the abscence of other factors should not be enough for a criminal charge.
Mr sanderson if that is all the evidence against that lot of puddings then If theywere a terror cell I’m the pope and Iam not a clergyman do not live in rome. Get a grip.
Mr Sanderson, perhaps treating would-be-terrorists with counselling and stern warnings wouldn’t be such a bad idea?
Surely punishing people for crimes they are yet to commit only adds fuel to terrorist recruitment propaganda?