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SYDNEY - A senior Indian diplomat says Australian authorities are not allowing him to assist a doctor arrested over a possible link to a UK terror plot.
Indian national Mohammed Haneef, who was arrested at Brisbane international airport on Monday night, is being questioned by federal police about a possible connection to bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said this morning that a senior British police officer was flying to Australia to question Dr Haneef.
He told the Seven Network today that a magistrate had extended by 48 hours the time for police to hold Dr Haneef.
Dr Haneef, a 27-year-old registrar at the Gold Coast Hospital, has a pregnant wife in India.
Queensland-based Indian consul Professor Savra-Daman Singh said Dr Haneef had asked that his pregnant wife be contacted in India.
But Prof Singh said Australian authorities had refused to provide Dr Haneef's details.
"We do not know his address in India, we do not know his passport number, we do not know his date of birth, there are no details to go on," Prof Singh told ABC radio.
"That was the end of it. We tried to find these things out (but) we could not glean that information from those who perhaps know."
Mr Howard said Dr Haneef had not been charged.
"I must stress that the man has been detained, he has been taken into custody, he has not been charged with any offence," Mr Howard said.
"Until he is -- and he may not be, it will depend very much on how the investigations go -- it is appropriate to extend to him a presumption of innocence."
Mr Howard said there were a number of options available to police.
"I would rather not speculate as to what police might do. Obviously, if they think questioning continues to be fruitful and this would be particularly relevant when the chief inspector arrives from the United Kingdom then they will continue to do so.
"Anybody who might be able to provide information then it should be possible for him to be fully questioned so that the police can be fully satisfied one way or the other."
Another foreign doctor from the same hospital as Dr Haneef was also questioned yesterday, but Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty this morning said there were no allegations against him and he was free to go.
"The other person whom we were speaking to yesterday is no longer with the police, he is going about his own business now and he's free to go," Mr Keelty told the Nine Network.
Mr Keelty would not give any further details on the second doctor or his connection to Dr Haneef.
"I think it's important we respect people's rights," he said.
"People will often in the course of an investigation -- whether it be a terrorist investigation or other sort -- be interviewed by police and be discounted or included as suspects.
"This person is now free to go and free to go about his own business, and we should respect his liberty and his privacy."
Earlier, Channel 4 news in Britain reported that UK police wanted to extradite Dr Haneef to London as soon as possible so he could be grilled by terrorism experts.
A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the report.
Mr Howard said he was yet to speak to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
"Our two offices are arranging for a phone call for later this week," he said.
"Not today, there's no particular need, the thing is being handled at an operational level."
Mr Howard said he could give an assurance that the government was doing everything it could to avoid a terrorist attack, but could not protect Australia absolutely.
"I cannot guarantee that there will never be a terrorist attack in this country -- I'll never do that because it is not possible to do so," he said.
"I can assure (Australians) that we are striving to achieve that balance between vigilance and common sense."
Mr Howard said the terrorist threat level had not been increased from medium as there was no indication of any imminent terrorist attack.
"There is nothing about the circumstances about the Australian connection, if I can call it that, with what has happened in the United Kingdom," he said.
"There is nothing about that connection which suggests that there is a higher likelihood of there being a terrorist attack (in Australia)."
Mr Howard also defended Australia's immigration vetting processes saying the man detained in Brisbane could be a "clean-skin" with no previously known links to terrorism.
Immigration
Dr Haneef came to Australia under a 457 visa.
"I've been told that this man was subject to the normal background checks, he was not on the immigration alert system," Mr Howard said.
"In other words there was no material available according to our intelligence system suggesting that he had any kind of terrorist link.
"That doesn't mean he doesn't (as) you often get people involved in terrorist behaviour -- and I'm not saying him, I'm talking generally -- who have had no previous association.
"They are what are called in the trade 'clean-skins'."
Mr Howard said calls to review Australia's immigration vetting processes were premature.
"Let's see how the questioning goes, let's see what emerges from this ... particularly if it were to morph into something more serious, you always go back and see whether you can improve the system," he said.
"The fact is that this man was subject to the normal security checks, there was no evidence in the alert system that he had a previous connection to terrorism or that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that."
Mr Howard said large gatherings, like the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) conference in September, would not be cancelled.
"We can't stop doing things because we fear there might be a terrorist attack. If we do that they've won," he said.
"We've got Apec coming up and then next year we'll have the massive Catholic Youth Day. It's the largest gathering of young people probably anywhere in the world and that's going to be held in Sydney.
"We have a whole number of events in our calender which involve vast congregations of people ... that's part of our life that's part of what western democratic freedoms demonstrate to the world and we have to keep doing those."
However, Mr Howard said security would be a priority during the Apec conference.
"Whenever there's a big conference like this (Apec) held anywhere in the world there's massive security and a partial city shutdown," he said.
"The only alternative to that is to say to the rest of the world we in Australia are too frightened to do these things anymore, we're surrendering to the terrorists, and I'm not going to do that."
UK doctors
Dr Haneef is one of eight people arrested in the past three days over the attacks.
Most of those arrested are believed to be doctors or associated with the National Health Service in Britain.
The head of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security, Professor Anthony Glees, said he believed at least one of those arrested was already known to Britain's top spooks and on MI5's database.
"My understanding is that at least one of these people was on the list of 1600 (possible terrorism suspects) identified (by MI5)," Prof Glees, a senior academic who specialises in intelligence, told Channel 4.
"Most of the others were known to MI5. That is to say their names appeared on a database somewhere..."
Earlier, British health authorities confirmed that Dr Haneef had worked part-time at a hospital in north-western England before moving to Queensland last year.
A spokeswoman for the North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust said Dr Haneef was as employed as a locum at Halton Hospital, in the town of Runcorn, Cheshire, until 2005.
"We have confirmed that Mohammed Haneef worked at Halton Hospital as a locum until 2005," she said.
"He wasn't on staff. He was used as and when they have the need (for extra doctors)."
A group of about five other doctors and two other men have also been arrested in Britain in connection to the latest attacks.
One of the doctors, a 26-year-old man arrested in the northern English city of Liverpool on Sunday, worked at the same hospital as Dr Haneef and the nearby Warrington Hospital.
The other doctors arrested reportedly worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, Scotland, and the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent in England.
- AAP
