Ruddock on 7:30 tonight said that the mistakes didn’t doom the Haneef case because it was going to be too difficult to make the case anyway.
Well then, that makes the public exposure, prolonged detention, canceled visa and questioned character much more acceptable.
UPDATE: Here are the relevant quotes from Ruddock:
And the Director of Public Prosecutions came to a view – and I’m not sure that many people understand this – that the one point in which it would be difficult for him to prove was that in 2006 at the time when the relevant Act, that is the handing over a SIM card for whatever purpose, that it was not to a terrorist organisation, or at least he couldn’t prove that it was handed over to what was a terrorist organisation at that point in time.
[snip]
He made the point that the errors were regrettable, but they didn’t go to the substance of the case.
So, it seems that Haneef was charged when the evidence could not support the charge – it was not new information that resulted in the charges being dropped, but just a re-thinking of the prospects of conviction. Isn’t this still an error by the Office of the DPP?
