An online chatroom conversation between Mohamed Haneef and his brother after the failed UK bomb plot was behind Australian Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews' decision to cancel the doctor's visa.
Under pressure to explain why he would not reinstate Dr Haneef's visa after the dropping of a charge againstthe former terror suspect, the minister yesterday made public previously unreleased material.
But he stopped short of publishing all the police information, after police warned it could jeopardise ongoing investigations.
Mr Andrews said the AFP had told him before making his visa decision that police suspected the internet conversation may be evidence Dr Haneef had prior knowledge of the plot.
He said Dr Haneef appeared to have used the birth of his daughter in India as a "false pretext" to urgently get out of Australia on July 2, the day the Gold Coast hospital registrar was arrested at Brisbane airport.
"There was ... a chatroom conversation with Dr Haneef's brother in India on the afternoon before his attempted hasty departure from Australia," Mr Andrews said, citing a record of the second police interview with Dr Haneef. "In it, the brother of Haneef, Shoaib, says 'nothing has been found out about you' and asked when Dr Haneef would be getting out, to which Haneef replied 'today'.
"The brother told him to 'tell them that you have to leave as you have a daughter born'.
"The brother then said not to delay his departure and not to let anyone else use his number in Australia, nor to give it to anyone.
"The brother added that 'auntie' told him that brother Kafeel used it in some sort of project over there," Mr Andrews said, in a reference to UK bombing accused Kafeel Ahmed.
"The whole circumstances surrounding Haneef's attempted hasty departure from Australia, including chatroom conversations, when viewed against his clear prior association with the Ahmed brothers, led me to form a reasonable suspicion as required by the migration legislation," Mr Andrews said.
Dr Haneef's lawyer Peter Russo ridiculed the Government's latest move, saying: "It is more smoke and mirrors from the minister.
