Keelty can't avoid responsibility

LET'S give Mick Keelty the benefit of the doubt. Let's presume that his policy and media advisers are strongly influencing his handling of the Mohamed Haneef case, his disingenuous responses and his glass-jawed reproach of critics of his shabby policy and policing.

LET'S give Mick Keelty the benefit of the doubt. Let's presume that his policy and media advisers are strongly influencing his handling of the Mohamed Haneef case, his disingenuous responses and his glass-jawed reproach of critics of his shabby policy and policing.

It is not an ideal presumption but it is preferable to the alternative: that he is completely in charge and wholly responsible for the dribble and the blame-shifting. If the latter is the case, if Keelty is indeed directing this self-defeating strategy, there is a more serious systemic problem at the top of the Australian Federal Police.

Because, if the AFP's top brass cannot admit they have made fundamental mistakes and cannot lead by example to correct them, they can learn nothing and achieve naught from this debacle.

A forensic dissection of all of the screw-ups will be possible when all of the documentary material is on the public record. The narrow bits have been released selectively and spun with dizzying effect. But on one main element, the most important element, Keelty is dangerously exposed.

He is exposed by his actions and by the AFP's actions on the morning of Saturday, July 14, when Haneef, who had been questioned for the previous 12 hours in a second interview (the first occurred on July 3) was formally charged with supporting a terrorist organisation.

The charge was a surprise. It was brought by a police officer in Brisbane. The charge was soon followed by a hastily called Keelty media conference in Canberra. The weekend media lapped it up.

It defies logic to think Keelty may not have had detailed prior knowledge that a charge would be brought in such an internationally important case, on which he had been publicly commentating from day one.

Keelty has not asserted that he did not have prior knowledge.

Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg QC (who has at least shown contrition for mistakes by his staff who were relying on police advice), cannot arrest a suspect. Bugg's prosecutors cannot charge a suspect. The prosecutors do, however, offer advice to the police. If Keelty's blame-shifting comment that "nothing the AFP has done has been done without the advice of the DPP", is taken at face value, we can presume the DPP did not object to a charge and probably recommended it. But it doesn't really matter. This is because the decision to charge is entirely a matter for the police.

It is a responsibility that should be taken seriously in every case, particularly an international terrorism case that has the highest priority and obvious political and community sensitivities.

Police can (and do) exercise their own judgment and often do not charge, notwithstanding DPP advice. Prudent police go back and gather better evidence so a future charge can stick.

Unfortunately for Keelty, the case on July14 was preposterously thin. In the ensuing days it became even thinner.

This highlights the most disappointing and worrying feature. Keelty, on July 14, had to know it was thin and at the very least he had to harbour strong suspicions. The police affidavit material prepared by his officers showed how thin the case was. The same material had been leaked and splashed across the front page of The Australian the day before under the headline "Reasons to hold Haneef stretch thinner by the day". The paucity of the evidence was no national secret and Keelty cannot claim that he did not know about it.

But they charged Haneef anyway. Why? When the case was a lemon, the evidence silly, the facts wrong, the risks huge, the prejudice high? Keelty might explain to the Australian public why, as the top cop, he did not nip it in the bud on that fateful morning.

If he had shown restraint and got across the detail before rushing to bring a charge that the politicians truly wanted, we would have been saved this monumental embarrassment, and Keelty would not be thrashing around now blaming everyone else.