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Admission by Aussie prosecutor as startling as the arrest of Kamer
View(s):“I have never been more proud to be a Sri Lankan after having seen the immense support for me,” said Lankan student following his release on bail
“I’m now a free man,” said Sri Lankan student Kamer Nizamdeen out on bail and firmly proclaiming his innocence after an extraordinary admission from a Crown prosecutor on Friday that there was little to substantiate Australian police charges that linked him to terrorism.
Kamer Nizamdeen
With this development Nizamdeen probably has little to fear from his next scheduled court appearance on October 24. The gifted student gave his trademark wide smile and a thumbs-up sign after leaving the Goulburn SuperMax prison in NSW where he has spent the past four weeks being interrogated and investigated over notebook entries that indicated terrorist acts were allegedly being contemplated.
The notebook was Nizamdeen’s – but the material that alarmed police was in handwriting that an expert has found could not be verified as his, and there is no indication that police have found anything else that warrants the charge laid against him. The young man’s family has claimed he had been set up, possibly out of jealousy. The mystery remains to be solved.
Following his release, Nizamdeen composedly gave interviews to Sri Lankan TV media saying he was innocent and thanking friends, family and supporters for standing by him. “I have never been more proud to be a Sri Lankan after having seen the immense support for me and belief that I am innocent, which I indeed am,” he said. “God bless you all.”
He thanked the Sri Lankan High Commissioner, Somasundaram Skandakumar, and consular staff for their efforts on his behalf and expressed gratitude to everyone, including Christian and Buddhist clergy, who had supported him by taking part in vigils and demonstrations and in scores of encouraging social media posts.
Nizamdeen’s lawyer, Moustafa Kheir, is confident that the case against his client has collapsed. The police case is “hopeless”, he wrote on Twitter. Mr. Kheir said in eight hours of interviews police had not uncovered anything untoward about Nizamdeen and examination of his phones and computers had also yielded nothing that would implicate him in violence.
Nizamdeen was arrested on August 30 and charged with collecting or making documents that would facilitate terrorism. Counter-terrorism and NSW police held a press conference to announce the arrest, saying the charges laid against the Sri Lankan “are serious and should not be underestimated”.
The arrest came after a co-worker at the University of NSW where Nizamdeen was a virtual poster boy, applauded by the university for his IT work while he was studying for his PhD, found a notebook containing entries that indicated an intent to assassinate the then Australian prime minister and foreign minister and carry out attacks on Sydney landmarks. The notebook was said to belong to Nizamdeen.
Police said he was not viewed as a member of IS but, on the basis of the notebook entries, alleged that he might be a lone wolf contemplating IS-style attacks.
Nizamdeen acknowledged that he had mislaid a notebook a while ago but denied that the material about attacks was in his handwriting.
This week, that assertion was held up in court in an admission that was every bit as startling as the arrest of the popular student who was held in high regard by colleagues as well as NSW police, with whom he had worked on a computer app to help foreign students find their way in Australia and be protected from frauds.
“The prosecution has become aware that an expert handwriting examiner found an inconclusive result on the relevant entries contained in the notebook,” crown prosecutor Christina Choi told the Central Local Court in Sydney on Friday morning in a hearing before Magistrate Robert Williams.
“Without a conclusive expert opinion suggesting the defendant was the relevant author, evidence for the charge has been significantly weakened.
“The prosecution concedes these are exceptional circumstances.” “Let’s be clear,” Nizamdeen’s lawyer, Mr. Kheir said later, “Mr. Nizamdeen today was granted bail because the case against him is extremely weak, almost non-existent.”
Nizamdeen’s bail conditions prohibit him from leaving the country or contacting UNSW staff or prosecution witnesses. He will stay with an uncle in the well-to-do suburb of St Ives in northern Sydney and report regularly to police. Mr. Kheir has successfully represented individuals arrested on suspicion of terrorism. One, Khaled Merhi, was freed after eight days under arrest in 2017 when police found he had no connection with an IS-directed plot to blow up an Etihad Airways flight with a bomb concealed in a meat grinder. The trial of two other men charged with involvement in that alleged plot is in process.
Recent events in Australia have heightened fears of terrorist attacks. Earlier this month, a young Bangladeshi student in Melbourne, Momena Shoma, pleaded guilty to attempting to kill her homestay host, Roger Singaravelu, saying IS encouraged women to carry out jihadist attacks. “I just felt obligated, and it was like a burden on me. Yeah, I just had to do it,” she told police.