22 January, 2004

Government's 'terror list' includes dead man

The Green Party has accused the government of gross incompetence for today issuing a list of suspected terrorists which includes at least one high profile terrorist suspect who was killed last October.

"Clearly, for all the government's anti-terrorist talk it didn't do even the most elementary checking of a list of twenty people provided by the UN Security Council last year," said Keith Locke, the Green Party's Foreign Affairs spokesperson.

"The list includes Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozhi, an alleged bomb-maker, who was shot by Filipino police on October 12, 2003. The Al-Ghozhi killing was world news, coming six days before US President George Bush visited Manila. Al-Ghozhi had headed the news bulletins three months earlier when he escaped from a Manila prison.

"It is gross incompetence for our anti-terrorist unit not to have picked this up. The government appears to have simply worked off a UN Security Council list issued on September 8, 2003, without any analysis of its own.

"At the time the Terrorism Suppression Act was going through Parliament I asked whether the government would scrutinize lists issued by the UN, before any terrorists were officially designated. I was told they would but clearly they have not.

"In reviewing the Zaoui case the Refugee Status Appeals Authority has highlighted how little the government examines material it gets from overseas agencies, and how this leads to mistakes.

"This is not good enough," said Mr Locke. "This latest farce, coming on top of the mishandling of the Zaoui case, indicates the urgent need for a review into how government agencies handle security issues."

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>