The New York Times-20080126-Fighting for Justice- Even at His Own Peril- -Biography-
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Fighting for Justice, Even at His Own Peril; [Biography]
IT took the police only a few days after the bungled bombings in London and Glasgow last June to round up all the suspects. One of them, Dr. Mohamed Haneef, was picked up half a world away, at the airport in this booming, sun-blessed capital of the state of Queensland.
In leaks to the media, in sealed affidavits and in court statements, the Australian police and prosecutors painted a dark picture of Dr. Haneef. They said that he had had suspicious financial dealings with one of the bombing suspects and that his personal cellphone SIM card had been found in the Jeep Cherokee that had ignited at the Glasgow airport.
Perhaps most damningly, even though his wife had given birth in India on June 26, they said Dr. Haneef did not seek to join her there until July 2, the day after the police in Britain had begun rounding up suspects. And his airplane ticket was a one-way ticket at that.
Leaks, closed hearings, action by immigration officials based on secret information -- it was all too much for Stephen Keim, an unassuming lawyer who was representing Dr. Haneef.
His name was being blackened, his future determined, outside the normal process of litigation, Mr. Keim said last week in his modest office on the 29th floor of a building in downtown Brisbane, the walls a bright yellow and decorated with four framed drawings of chess pieces by one of his sons.
The ill treatment he perceived propelled him to take two momentous actions. First, he leaked the 142-page transcript of the police interrogation of Dr. Haneef, a possible ethical violation that, if traced to him, could result in the loss of his law license. Then he named himself as the source.
AS Mr. Keim had expected, public reaction to the transcript was explosive. The transcript revealed several discrepancies in the government's case. In an affidavit, for example, the police had told the court that Dr. Haneef, an Indian-born resident of Queensland, had no explanation for his one-way ticket and his delay in trying to join his wife until a week after she had given birth.
The transcript, though, revealed that he had told the police he tried to go sooner but had been unable to find someone to cover for him at the hospital in Queensland where he worked. As soon as he did, his father-in-law bought a ticket for him in India because he did not have enough money in his bank account here. He would buy the return ticket there, he told them, according to the transcript.
His financial dealings with one of the suspects were easily explained. And the police neglected to tell the court that Dr. Haneef had made four calls to the British detective who he had heard wanted to talk to him, but none of the calls had been returned. As for the SIM card, yes, he had given it to Sabeel Ahmed, a cousin. But the card was with Mr. Ahmed in Liverpool when he was arrested in connection with the bombings, not in the Jeep; Dr. Haneef had given it to him in June 2006, and the card still had unused time on it.
Public opinion abruptly shifted, with Dr. Haneef being seen as a victim of Australia's harsh antiterrorism laws and racism. Within two weeks the government dropped all criminal charges against him, but it revoked his visa and he returned to India.
Mr. Keim, however, became the target of a new investigation.
The commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Keelty, filed a complaint with the Queensland agency that oversees allegations of lawyer misconduct, as did a private lawyer, Russell Biddle.
Releasing the transcript was unprofessional and inappropriate, the federal police said in a statement, and resulted in a great deal of misinformed and speculative reporting. Lawyers are prohibited here from releasing any documents that have not been filed in court. It's not his place to argue his client's case in the media, Mr. Biddle said in a telephone interview this week. He said Australians did not want their country to become like the United States, where lawyers frequently make statements to the news media during a trial.
The investigation is expected to be completed by the end of January, and while Mr. Keim could lose his license if found guilty, Mr. Biddle said a reprimand was more likely.
Even that would seem to be too much for Mr. Keim's many supporters, who view him as a profile in courage (for leaking the document) and of integrity (for admitting responsibility).
Mr. Keim and his co-counsel, Peter Russo, were named Australians of the Year on Jan. 19 by the weekend edition of The Australian, the newspaper that was the recipient of the leak.
The Australian itself had been reluctant to publish details of the transcript for fear of violating an antiterrorism law that prohibits anyone from releasing information about a terrorism suspect who has been detained. Eventually, Mr. Keim said, he convinced the paper's lawyers that they were looking at the wrong law, and they went ahead.
Being in the media glare was something new, and a bit uncomfortable, for Mr. Keim. Though long committed to progressive causes -- he was head of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties in the late 1980s -- he had not taken an active role in recent battles between the government and civil libertarians over antiterrorism laws and the treatment of two Australians once detained at Guantanamo Bay, Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks.
Mr. Keim came from relatively modest beginnings, one of 10 children of a schoolteacher father and stay-at-home mother. He first thought of becoming a doctor but he was interested in politics, and switched to law after a year at the University of Queensland.
I enjoyed law from the first time I opened a law book, he said during a recent interview. His oldest child, Anna, has recently become a trial lawyer, and will soon be squatting in his office, as she put it, standing amid the law books. Two of her brothers are also studying law, but one is really more interested in music and the other in football, she said.
Mr. Keim represented Dr. Haneef pro bono, a decision he made in consultation with his wife, Denise. We decided this guy's whole life has been completely disrupted, we're not going to charge him, he explained.
THE last straw, for Mr. Keim, came two weeks after Dr. Haneef was detained. On July 16, a judge granted Mr. Keim's motion for bail, though Dr. Haneef remained in custody. Immediately, however, the government, at the time in the hands of the center-right Liberal Party under Prime Minister John Howard, revoked Dr. Haneef's visa on the grounds that he had associated with persons of bad character.
With that, Mr. Keim called an investigative journalist at The Australian, Hedley Thomas, who he believed had been writing fairly about the case, and offered him the transcript of the police interrogation. After the article appeared, the journalistic pack began hunting for the source.
Mr. Keim did not want blame to fall on his co-counsel, Mr. Russo, and he was worried that journalists would shift their focus from Dr. Haneef's treatment to a search for the leaker. After again consulting his wife, he issued a statement that he had given the transcript to The Australian.
The Australian government, which is now controlled by the Labor Party, announced recently that it would not appeal a court ruling that Dr. Haneef's visa had been improperly revoked. He is thus able to return from India and resume working, which he has said he wants to do.
It would be the closure I need, Mr. Keim said. To see him, and his little girl and his wife, walk into the airport, and I can give them a hug.
[Illustration]PHOTO: I enjoyed law from the first time I opened a law book.: STEPHEN KEIM (PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY SERNACK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)