Latest political stunt from Jihad John

I don't know whether Australian citizen Jack Thomas is a potential terrorist or not, but Blind Freddie can see that he's had a raw deal.

Thomas was convicted earlier this year of receiving money from Al Qaeda, but the conviction was overturned by the Victorian Court of Appeal. Thomas has consistently claimed that the charges against him were based on statements he made under physical and psychological torture in a Pakistan prison.

The gutter press branded him 'Jihad Jack' and has relentlessly waged a ludicrous but effective character assassination campaign against him over the past couple of years.

Now that Thomas is a free man, and probably out of sheer spite, the Jihad John Howard Government has placed an "interim control order" on this man whom the courts have determined to be not guilty. This involves a curfew, thrice-weekly reporting to police, monitoring of his communications (phone, email, etc) and other impositions. Welcome to John Howard's New Australia Order.

"The prosecution has said their case 'stands or falls' on the basis of a single interview conducted in March 2003 while Jack was detained in Pakistan. In the interview Jack asks repeatedly to see a lawyer but both AFP agents conducting the interview fail to inform him that his family had already obtained legal representation in the days following his arrest. Instead they tell him that the Pakistanis won’t allow him a lawyer and proceed with the interview, ignoring a basic right under Australian law.

"Jack soon found himself in solitary confinement in Barwon Prison’s maximum security Acacia Unit where all of the suffering and pain from his experiences in Pakistan came flooding back in what one psychiatrist has described as a form of 'secondary torture'."
The Real Jack Thomas

Thomas control order based on 'far-fetched' idea

Tagged: terrorism, australia, war+on+terror, torture, civil+rights, human+rights, law, legal