INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - DECEMBER 16th - DECEMBER 31st
- 2007
AUSSIE COURT RESTORES HANEEF'S WORK VISA
It was a double celebration for Mohammad Haneef, the Indian doctor based in Brisbane who was wrongly accused of abetting the failed bombings at Glasgow airport in UK, as the Australian Federal Court reinstated his work visa coinciding with Eidul Azha festival.
Mr. Haneef's work visa was cancelled five months back on grounds of his failing the character test. The cancellation came even as he was granted bail by a Brisbane magistrate following a 12-day detention on terror charges. The bail followed the failure of the Australian authorities to furnish proof of his association with the failed UK terror bombings, besides the fact that he had unknowingly passed on a SIM card to one of his cousins accused in the bombings.
The charges were dropped later as Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions announced there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction, enabling Haneef to return to his hometown, Bangalore, on July 29. Five months later, Mr. Haneef is now free to restart work in Australia. "I formed the judgment that there was no basis for me to seek to move to cancel Haneef's visa... Haneef is entitled to return to this country and take up employment in accordance with his visa," Australian immigration minister Chris Evans told the news agencies.
The full bench of the Federal Court, in a "unanimous" decision here, dismissed a government petition challenging Justice Jeffery Spender's ruling in August in favour of the 27-year-old medico from Bangalore. "The Full Court has concluded that the 'association' to which... the Migration Act refers is one involving some sympathy with, or support for, or involvement in, the criminal conduct of the person, group or organisation with whom the visa holder is said to have associated.
"The association must be such as to have some bearing upon the person's character....The Court has therefore dismissed the Minister's appeal, with costs," it added.
Mr. Haneef, living in Bangalore since July 29 and currently on the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, told the agencies that his legal battle was aimed at clearing his name. "It is a double Eid for us today," an emotional Ashfaq Ahmed, father-in-law of Mohammed Haneef said in Bangalore. "Today's Bakrid is special for us. Early morning, we got the good news about Haneef's work visa. Our family is very happy," he told agencies. On whether Haneef would now go back to Australia, he said: "I will have to speak to him."
|
