Lets start recklessly supporting the truth…
When an agency is keen to see someone detained, its staff may be inclined to emphasise isolated statements from a transcript that would promote their desired outcome, rather than supply a wider context that might support a more benign interpretation.
This problem is compounded when statements are paraphrased rather than quoted verbatim. It is incumbent on Keelty to clarify and justify the process by which some parts of the interview seem to have been presented to Andrews and others not.
The minister’s awareness of what he was doing is just as important. In defence of his approach, he might argue that the transcript was not technically available to him, although he surely could have obtained a copy.
But there is a deeper question here, too. His power to cancel a visa arises only when he “reasonably” suspects that the visa-holder does not pass the character test. If Andrews knew that interview material presented to him was only a fragment of some larger interview, but nonetheless made no effort to read the interview in its entirety, could a suspicion formed on the basis of that fragment properly be described as reasonable?
This may be a matter that Haneef’s lawyers wish to pursue in the Federal Court. In the meantime, however, it is a matter with which all Australians concerned with justice and due process should be concerned as well.
Emphasis and hyperlinks mine.
In the meantime Haneef is being schlepped around the country in bare feet surrounded by a dozen security vehicles, lights ablaze. Why is he even being tried here, when the allegations relate to events in Britain? Surely it’s not because we have a Government eager to cook up another bogus fright.
