Australia Wednesday played down the risk of a row with India over the treatment of an Indian doctor held on terror charges, as a senior judge ridiculed the reasons for keeping the suspect locked up.
"I don't see any rift developing in relation to this matter," Prime Minister John Howard told reporters, as several other senior ministers pressed the same point in a series of media interviews. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said later that Australia should provide all proper legal safeguards to Mohammed Haneef, 27, who has been charged in connection with failed car bombings in Britain last month.
"They ought to extend all the facilities within the law and the rights he is entitled to," Singh was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India. On Tuesday, India summoned Australia's top diplomat to convey its "concern" over the treatment of the doctor, who had been working in a government hospital in the up-market Gold Coast region north of Sydney.
A court granted Haneef bail on Monday on the grounds that there was no evidence he had a direct link to the attacks but the government immediately revoked his visa, ensuring that he would remain in detention. "All the Indian government has done is to go through the proper processes of inquiry about one of its citizens," Howard said.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock also said the concerns raised by the Indian government did not indicate a diplomatic rift. "I don't know that they were saying he was being dealt with unjustly," he told national radio.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said a big concern was how the media was covering Australia's detention of the doctor. "The important thing for Australia and India is that we don't let the media, particularly, of course, here the Indian media, drive the relationship - that we make sure we keep fully in contact with each other," he said.
In a day of rapid developments in the case, Haneef's lawyers lodged a Federal Court appeal against the doctor's visa being revoked and a hearing was set down for August 8.
The judge hearing the application surprised the court by suggesting that he too would fail the "character test" under which Haneef's visa was withdrawn. Australia's immigration minister had said he based his action on a "reasonable suspicion" that Haneef had an association with criminals. Judge Jeffery Spender pointed out that he had represented murderers in the past.
The charge against Haneef presented in court boils down to an allegation that he gave his mobile phone SIM card and its unused talk-time to one of his two second cousins before leaving Britain for Australia a year ago. Both men, also doctors, have been arrested in connection with the failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow last month.
Haneef was moved from police cells to a high-security prison in Brisbane Wednesday, where he is being held under special conditions for terror suspects, including solitary confinement except for one hour's exercise a day.
The government's action in blocking his release on bail has been widely criticised by legal and civil rights groups, who argue that it has undermined the principle of an accused being presumed innocent until proven guilty. In turn, the government has been angered by the leak to a newspaper of Haneef's statement to police shortly after his arrest on July 2.
According to published details of the statement, Haneef described himself as a moderate Muslim and said he knew nothing about the failed bombings. Haneef's barrister Stephen Keim later admitted he leaked the document to counter "an aggressive campaign of selective leaking" by authorities designed to suggest the case against the doctor was stronger than it really was.