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Terrorist tried to warn ASIO
I agree 100% with this article. The most precious thing you can get in the War On Terror is someone who can be turned. What did ASIO do?Jacque S*it. They were more concerned with right wing red necks who were belching brain farts. But Muslims were a protected species, who had to celebrate our difference and embrace our diversity. Whatever that means. After Bali they started to wake up, but Iâm still not convinced they have got a clue. AUSTRALIAâs first convicted terrorist, Jack Roche, could have provided vital information on terror networks two years before the Bali bombings, a senior Australian Federal Police officer said yesterday. AFP agent Michael Duthie said it was "entirely possible" that ASIO could have gleaned important information about Bali bombing mastermind Hambali, had it responded to telephone calls from Roche. But Agent Duthie said it did not necessarily follow that the Bali bombings could have been prevented. ASIO and the Howard Government have strongly denied receiving any information that might have helped prevent the Bali tragedy, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. According to evidence that emerged during Rocheâs trial, the information he had at the time included Hambaliâs then home and mobile phone numbers, two email addresses that Roche believed Hambali gave him, the address of a Karachi house he stayed in that was used by al-Qaâida operatives and two email addresses for senior al-Qaâida lieutenant Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (whom Roche knew as Mukhtar). Agent Duthie confirmed yesterday that Roche had attempted to contact ASIO in July and August 2000, shortly after he had returned from a visit to Malaysia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Roche told the court his calls to ASIO were never returned so he eventually gave up. In a dramatic twist, Rocheâs trial ended abruptly yesterday after he changed his plea to guilty of one charge of conspiring with international terrorists to blow up the Israeli embassy. The guilty plea came after two weeks of hearings and a decision by Roche that he did not want to be cross-examined further. The charge carries a maximum jail term of up to 25 years. Rocheâs wife, Afifah, said she believed her husband changed his plea only because he was depressed. "He doesnât want to speak any more," she said. Outside court, Agent Duthie, who led the investigation into Roche, described the information that Roche has since divulged about terror networks JI and al-Qaâida as useful. He said he was surprised at how much information Roche had given and had no idea what motivated his decision to say so much. "Basically he was putting a noose around his own neck by participating in those long interviews," Agent Duthie said. "Itâs not every day that you strike someone in a position that Roche was, and certainly, from our perspective, the type of information that he was passing on was fairly unique." Agent Duthie said JI and al-Qaeda still posed a very real threat to people in Australia and elsewhere. "As far as we were concerned (Roche) was an important figure and, as a consequence, we put a lot of resources and effort into it (our investigation of him)". Roche told the court he had spoken out in November 2002 to The Australian, and later to AFP officers, because he was concerned he would be made a scapegoat for ASIOâs failure to anticipate the Bali bombings. "I had already previously tried to contact ASIO and they werenât throwing out any lifelines. I was on my own. I thought if I contacted somebody in the media I wouldnât disappear in a puff of smoke," he said. Roche told the court he had made several attempts to contact ASIO, even setting up an appointment to see a "Dan or John" in Perth the day he received the call to visit alleged terror boss Abu Bakar Bashir. He said he left a message asking for the appointment to be postponed, but that his messages were not returned. "The last time I called ASIO no one seemed to be particularly interested in what was going on," he told AFP agents. "I have been sitting in Thornlie (in Perth) and in South Perth waiting for somebody to come knocking on my door." During nine days of evidence, the court was told how English-born Roche, 50, became a member of the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiah, before being sent to Afghanistan via Pakistan. The conviction came as ASIO chief Dennis Richardson yesterday slammed an international report that he said wrongly suggested the intelligence agency had "blatantly disregarded" threat assessments that could have prevented the Bali bombing. "As an organisation we have been accused of the most blatant failure imaginable. If that claim in the Rand report is true, then I deserve to be sacked and ASIO deserves to be closed down," Mr Richardson told the committee. Mr Richardson told a parliamentary inquiry into the Bali bombing that the allegation, in a report by the normally respected Rand Corporation think tank, should not be allowed to stand and he urged the parliamentary committee to seek answers over flaws in the report. The report found ASIO was so jealous of the AFPâs counter-terrorist role that it refused to share critical intelligence. Posted by: tipper 2004-05-28 |
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