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This important book chronicles the curious case of Dr Haneef, an innocent man presumed guilty by overzealous police and prosecutors, and over excited politicians and pressmen.

nstead, he suffered three weeks of wrongful imprisonment. He was wrongly charged, without evidence, by the Australian federal police and when he applied for bail false statements were made on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions to prevent him from obtaining release. John Howard, the Prime Minister, doubtless sensing an early election issue, criticised the Queensland labour government for failing to vet Dr Haneef for terrorist connections, whilst Philip Ruddock stirred up as much prejudice as possible by press statements. It took a courageous magistrate at a second hearing to grant Dr Haneef bail after he had been in detention for ten days, but thereupon the Minister of Immigration, Kevin Andrews, dishonourably and disgracefully contrived to keep him in detention by cancelling his immigration visa on “character” grounds that he should have known to be bogus. A federal court judge, John Clark, later described his action as “astounding”. Meanwhile no less than 600 federal and state police were deployed in an effort to turn over Dr Haneef’s life and contacts in a hunt for “negative” information about him and to give politicians further opportunities for publicising themselves and prejudicing his case by referring to his presumed terrorist associations. And all the time, in secret and in vain, ASIO was reporting to the government that Dr Haneef had no terrorist connections at all.

The official report into the Haneef affair, by Judge John Clarke, was an indictment of government ministers for making “astonishing” and “troubling” decisions to deny liberty to an innocent person.