Colin Mitchell
On August 23, Sydney architect Faheem Lodhi was sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court to 20 years for preparing to commit a terrorist act. After Jack Thomas had his terrorism charges quashed on August 18 by the Court of Appeals on the basis that the evidence against him was obtained under duress, the Howard government and security agencies desperately needed a "terrorist" to lock up.
The August 24 Sydney Morning Herald had as its front page headline: "Mystery path from architect to terrorist". It is indeed a mystery if Lodhi's guilt is assumed. But the evidence against Lodhi is unconvincing, and not the kind that would normally be regarded as "beyond a reasonable doubt". It is more likely that Lodhi is not a terrorist.
While Justice Anthony Whealy, who handed down the draconian sentence, believes that Lodhi is a terrorist, he is still "mystified" at Lodhi's transformation from a "laissez-faire" Muslim to one with extremist views. But Lodhi has himself said that fundamentalists have distorted Islam and that he doesn't hold such views. He has also testified that "killing innocent people is not part of Islam".
The judge was relying on the contents of a CD-ROM of extremist material found at Lodhi's home and played in the courtroom to dramatic effect. Lodhi denied ever having seen it before. It is possible it was planted by ASIO or the federal police, two organisations which are highly motivated to secure convictions and which may consider it ethical to plant evidence to secure a conviction if they believe their suspect is guilty and dangerous.
The judge accused Lodhi of "not renouncing his intention to prepare an attack". But how could he if he had no terrorist intentions in the first place?
The assumption of Lodhi's guilt in some circles can be explained by the need to find a scapegoat. As in the witch-hunts of old, and in the McCarthyist era, people's fears can be partly exorcised by the arrest of scapegoats, who are then demonised.
Lodhi has been convicted on the basis of alleged future intentions. No actual plans for any terrorist act have been uncovered. The evidence of those intentions is weak: openly inquiring about the prices of certain chemicals in an office environment; buying two diagrams of the electricity grid; and possessing recipes for amateur explosives and one for invisible ink copied down years earlier from a juvenile "anarchist" website.
Whealy concluded that Lodhi must have been going to bomb the electricity grid, even though the diagrams he had bought would have been useless. Lodhi, an entrepreneurial type, said he wanted a wall and desk map to promote one of his business schemes — exporting electrical generators to his native Pakistan. Family and friends confirmed Lodhi's discussion with them of his plans.
Likewise, they confirmed his discussion of plans to export detergents for tanneries in Pakistan, a country with a big leather industry. He had enquired about prices for some chemicals, the same ones which could have been used as ingredients for explosives. The prosecution accused Lodhi of wanting to make urea nitrate, and brought in an explosives expert to describe to the jury what would happen if urea nitrate was exploded in the court room. But Lodhi never acquired any chemicals, nor did he have any equipment for making explosives.
The notes, from the website, were written on 15 pages torn from an exercise book. They were described by the prosecution as a "terrorist manual". Lodhi's lawyer characterised them as "unsophisticated" and more like a "boy's own" spy kit. Lodhi said he copied them down out of curiosity at the time, and then forgot about them. Many young males do get excited about the idea of home-made "bombs", but that doesn't make them terrorists.
The jury was deadlocked, unable to come to a verdict for more than a week. This indicates that evidence that Lodhi was a terrorist was not clear "beyond a reasonable doubt". Whealy sent the jury back to get a unanimous verdict. In such a pressure-cooker situation justice can be compromised. Juries are also influenced by the prevailing political climate which, since 9/11 and the federal government's "war on terror", has made many a lot more worried about terrorists and terrorism.
In Lodhi's case, this has meant that the threshold of what constitutes "beyond reasonable doubt" has been lowered to an alarming degree. Justice and civil rights are the victims of this "war on terror" in which the government and security agencies benefit politically from convicting supposed terrorists. It is likely that Lodhi's conviction and sentencing demonstrates, as in the Thomas case, that terror laws are being used to jail people who are not terrorists.
[Colin Mitchell is an activist in the Melbourne-based group Civil Rights Defence.]