Here is a recent Background Briefing podcast from the ABC. It discusses an undercover investigation into terrorist activities in Melbourne, Australia It raises legal ethical and operational issues and is useful for anyone involved in counter terrorism in leading discussions on sensitive topics like those under discussion. An open mind will help see the position of others.
The program is interesting from many perspectives. It tells the tale of a number of young Australian men who were radicalised and the use of an undercover operation to investigate the activity of those involved.
The assertation that such an operation could not have taken place in the USA is both erroneous and distracts from the key points in this case. Comparing the justice system in USA and any commonwealth country including Australia, is flawed because there are so many legal differences.
Undercover operations are fraught with risks and need to be managed to ensure compliance with human rights and the local legislation. Agencies need to be forthright in defending the rationale for their decisions.
Few members of the public have any idea, how difficult it is to gain intelligence on the existence of a terrorist cell, let alone the difficulties in penetrating it to a sufficient extent to disrupt their activities. This podcast highlights these difficulties. In coping with the fact that a family member or someone in their community has become involved in terrorism, there will always be the need to rationalise and minimise the extent of that person’s involvement and to suggest that had they only known there would have be no need for police intervention. These are just our natural defence mechanisms at play. They are understandable.
In this case it is apparent that these young men first tried to travel abroad to support terrorism but were thwarted by the activities of police. Let us not sweep aside the seriousness of the intention to join ISIS abroad, as some in this podcast would try to do. Once in Syria or Iraq they would a have been involved in murdering , torturing and raping others, many of them Muslims. When their attempts to travel were stopped they then turned to plotting an attack in their own city. Here again they were unsuccessful.
The case made in the podcast is that these young men were not serious, and that they entrapped by the police. The reality is that had the police not been involved it is exactly these type of young men, that become involved in terrorist attacks. They are suckered into a terrorist cause by more sinister elements. While they may be foolish, naïve or misguided, all to they bring about irreparable harm to others.
While the judge expressed concerns about some aspects of the investigation the guilty decision is the right one. For the police there will be lessons to learn and things to improve upon. It is hard to get everything right in an investigation like this, where there are multiple moving parts especially when getting it wrong can ultimately lead to multiple deaths. For government there are lessons to be learned with regard to ensuring there is appropriate oversight of all covert operations in order to protect everyone’s human rights.
For the young men involved, there is time to reflect on how they were lead down a road by those purporting a twisted ideology and to thank those who saved them from the horrors of Syria or Iraq.
For their mother’s I would say this: it may be a hard thing to visit your child in jail but it is a lot harder to live with the fact that their child lies dead in a ditch in some foreign land.
Because of good police work lives were saved and the police should never fear engaging in full and frank discussions about the legal and ethical difficulties in undertaking undercover operations. And there is nothing to fear from hearing the views of others.
