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SYDNEY - No other country will drill as deep into the backgrounds of visa applicants to identify terrorists than Australia, Prime Minister John Howard says.
Howard yesterday fast-tracked changes to immigration screening that match spy data with a person's travel and financial history to determine if they might be a security threat to Australia.
The planned introduction of the software in September, just before the federal election, had been accelerated by the linking of Australia to the UK bombing attempts, he said. They also follow revelations that Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef, arrested in Brisbane over possible links to the foiled attacks, was working in Australia under a 457 work visa.
New Zealanders travelling to Australia on special category visas (SCV) or those from other countries arriving with electronic travel authorities (ETA) will also be subject to the checks. Applications for SCVs and ETAs are submitted through travel agents or airlines when travellers buy their tickets.
Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said Australian authorities had name-matching technology which enabled agencies to assess whether further inquiries were needed of individuals on these visas.
"What we've been able to do ... is to look at people at the point when they are buying their ticket to get on an aircraft or at the point when they are at the overseas airline gate and are about to get on an aircraft," he told reporters. "We want to know before people travel whether or not there are issues of concern to us, and we've been more effective at that, and other countries are keen to emulate it."
Howard said the new measures included matching movement and financial data with associations a person might have overseas or in Australia to provide a more comprehensive picture and targeted security advice. "These new resources ... give us extraordinary additional capacity to drill down into the backgrounds of people who seek to come to Australia.
"This system I am told is better than any border control system of its kind elsewhere.
"It will enable us to access the background behaviour of people ... and track patterns of travel and other behaviour which suggests a predisposition on the part of somebody towards maligned behaviour."
Howard said additional resources would be provided to both the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and ASIO this financial year to implement the system.
Opposition leader Kevin Rudd welcomed the changes, saying Labor supported any practical measure enhancing Australia's national security.
In Britain, it emerged yesterday that a terror suspect involved in the bomb attacks on London and Glasgow was a known associate of a senior al Qaeda figure caught plotting to blow up passenger jets four years ago.
Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian doctor, knew one of the terror group's most high-profile bomb makers in Europe, according to senior security sources.
Ahmed, 27, who remains critically ill in hospital after the failed car bomb attack last weekend on Glasgow Airport, met convicted terrorist Abbas Boutrab in Belfast while studying for a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at the city's Queen's University between 2001 and 2004.
The disclosure will raise fresh questions over the extent of information held by MI5 on the suspects.
Boutrab was arrested in Belfast during 2003 and convicted two years later for downloading information on how to blow up a passenger jet.
Security sources and sources within Ireland's Islamic community allege both men may have belonged to the same al Qaeda unit which viewed Ireland as a "quiet base" from which to launch attacks in Britain.
A senior detective in Belfast said: "Boutrab headed up the cell that operated on the quiet both in Northern Ireland and the Republic. That cell included Kafeel Ahmed while he was a student at Queen's."
Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla, 27, was remanded in custody at City of Westminster court charged in connection with the plots. Stocky, unshaven and wearing a white sweat shirt, Abdulla sat in the dock flanked by plainclothes security officers, speaking only to confirm his name and date of birth during the brief hearing. His lawyers did not seek bail, and judge Anthony Evans ordered him held at a high-security prison until his next hearing on July 27.
- OBSERVER, AP, AAP
