Melbourne, Dec.26: An Australian Muslim lawyer, who is also a lecturer in politics at Monash University, one of Australia's largest and most prestigious law schools, has suggested that Bangalore-based Dr. Mohammad Haneef was the victim of a desperate John Howard Government that dug itself into a hole and proceeded to deepen it.

In an article written for The Age, Waleed Aly, now says that thankfully the digging for further allegations against Haneef has stopped, and he believes that an appeal against the High Court’s decision is unlikely.

“We can only hope that the court's last decision is the penultimate act in one of the more contemptible episodes in recent Australian political history. The final act should be a judicial inquiry,” Aly says in his article.

He describes the Haneef terrorism charge incident as ridiculous, and says that the significance of the Federal Court judgement is that it has set a legal precedent and lays the foundation for a thorough rejection of former immigration minister Kevin Andrews' extraordinarily belligerent conduct during this affair.

He believes that the national security argument has collapsed and that the political cynicism of Andrews' behaviour has become clear with the leaking of e-mails between his adviser and the federal police to the media.

The key, unanimous statement emerging from the court decision was that "none of the elements cited as evidence, whether individually or together, was capable of supporting a reasonable suspicion that Dr Haneef knew of, was sympathetic to, supported, or was involved in any way in criminal conduct undertaken by the Ahmeds".

That, according to Aly, is a damning conclusion. (ANI)