Commissioner Keelty's comments from Press Conference - Saturday 14 July 2007

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty this morning held a press conference in Canberra. Following is the Commissioner’s opening address to the media:

The Joint Counter-Terrorism Taskforce in Brisbane this morning charged Dr Haneef under Section 102.7 (2) of the Criminal Code - that is to providing support to a terrorist group. The charge has come about as a result of almost 12 days of intense investigation. The investigation is continuing. We have been always working in support of investigations being conducted by the London Metropolitan Police and the Counter-Terrorism Command in the UK.

There are aspects of this case that I feel needs explanation. One is the length of time for the detention of Dr Haneef is something that we had to work our way through. It was a question of balancing human rights, balancing the needs of the community and the needs of the organisation to establish the facts.

And to give you some idea of the difficulties encountered in this matter, we have had nearly 300 police and lawyers across Australia involved in the investigation. As I mentioned to you, the investigation is continuing.

The inquiries involved, and will continue to involve, something in the order of the equivalent of 36,000 four drawer filing cabinets. That is the quantity of material that's been seized in electronic form from various locations.

The Commonwealth DPP has been working with us and we have been acting on their advice in moving forward to charge Dr Haneef this morning. The detention of Dr Haneef, whilst attracting considerable media attention, is something that the organisation and certainly myself believes was necessary in order to afford everybody the best opportunity to understand what has occurred and what has alleged to have occurred.

It's not been an easy time for investigators. There has been intense media scrutiny of the investigation, which is understandable,  but could have been more help if we didn't have as much speculation about certain aspects of the investigation, whether they were politically driven, or otherwise.

I can assure you that the investigation, the joint investigation by the Queensland Police and the Australian Federal Police, the West Australian Police and other policing organisations around the country has been driven by the evidence and driven by the facts and driven by the inquiries emerging both out of Australia and out of the UK.

An aspect to the investigation that has also helped has been the use of a national security hotline. Members of the public have been using the hotline during the course of the investigation and we thank them for their assistance in providing information to us.

One of the things that I will point out is that this is a very different set of circumstances. The investigation into the LTTE (Tamil Tigers), that many people will be aware we only recently charged a further person in respect to those matters earlier this week, that investigation has taken us two years.

The requirement here in this investigation was to move through as quickly as possible a considerable volume of material.

In the time that Dr Haneef was detained, he was afforded access to his family. We were having much difficulty in getting that access for him. We were working in partnership with the Indian High Commission and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the High Commissioner for India for his assistance and the assistance of his staff in the investigation.