Dusk vigil to pray for justice for Kamer
No one can say for sure whether Mohamed Kamer Nizamdeen arrested by the Australian Police three weeks ago of secretly plotting to kill Aussie politicians and bomb Aussie hot spots was a lone wolf, a closeted Muslim fanatic who clothed his dark secret of being a terror merchant in burka and instead pretended to be a dissipate playboy who had squandered the dictates of the Holy Quran, sacrificed his reward of thirteen virgins in heaven, in return for the earthy bliss of wine, women and song.
The ideal cover for one who wants the world to think he is not what he truly is.
But whilst his family and friends rushed to use his partying, socialising, drinking, man about town image and lifestyle as a defence to the charge of him being a radicalised Ayatollah down under in Australia; whilst his former principal at Asian International School Goolbai Gunasekera dipped her nib in pink ink to describe him as one of her fondest pupils who sat in the lap of her Academia for two years after frog hopping from S. Thomas Prep to S. Thomas Mount to do his London ALs in her dormitory, and lavished praise on him stating “His unfailing courtesy to teachers and to his classmates was noticed from the start. Teachers who taught him were always full of praise for his work ethic and his general thorough approach to studies,” adding that it was impossible to accept this young boy was ‘ radicalised’, the sort of schoolboy saint who’ll never even dream of harming an innocent fly; the Aussie police thought otherwise.
They branded him a terrorist. And held the supposed scribbles he is alleged to have made in a notebook as the damning evidence to throw him to an Aussie jail and keep him incarcerated till Aussie justice plodded on in the same casual manner Aussie life does down at the Billabong singing Waltzing Matilda, to determine whether the young man, who was working as an IT contractor at the University of New South Wales, was guilty of the charges leveled against him.
It all began on August 30 when in a sudden swoop, the Aussie police arrested Kamer, the 25- year- old nephew of Lankan Minister Faiszer Musthapha’s wife, at his Sydney flat.
The charge sheet read: ‘collecting or making a document which is connected with preparation for, the engagement of a person in, or assistance in a terrorist act.’
And what was the evidence: A notebook allegedly recovered by one of Kamer’s colleagues. According to Australian Police, the notebook allegedly contained a list of “symbolic” locations in Sydney, as well as names of prominent individuals to be targeted in an alleged terror plot. After having deduced from this questionable documentation that Kamer must be a card carrying member of the dreaded ISIS, the Aussie Police told court they believed Kamer was affiliated to the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group and thus should be locked up. According to Aussie cops, his notebook contained details of potential terror attacks on certain places and individuals. The book is now being analysed by Aussie psychologists and investigators. Upon receiving information of the notebook from a university employee the Police acted swiftly to arrest Kamer, the Australian media reported. It was on this basis that the police made their request to the court to detain him further.
And an obliging judge of Oz answered the police 991 call and sentenced Kamer to remand prison till the 24th of October when he’ll be hauled before Ozzie court for it to determine whether he should be remanded further till Aussie cops continue their investigation to gather sufficient evidence to prove whether Kamer is indeed the one man Rambo terror squad set to terrorise the Aussie streets as they, with their August 30th, arrest, painted him out to be.
Of course, the Australian High Commission, which holds the glib view that all convicts – and now suspected terrorists – seek the Sydney sunshine as their ancestors were once forced to do by the British as an easy, convenient method of easing congestion in British jails -as Dickens has vividly described in his novels David Copperfield and Great Expectations -- say that the “a 25-year-old Sri Lankan national has been charged under section 101.5 of Australia’s Criminal Code Act 1995, with collecting or making a document which is connected with preparation for, the engagement of a person in, or assistance in a terrorist act.
In response to questions posed by the
Sunday Times, the Aussie High Commission said the maximum penalty for this offence is imprisonment for 15 years. And added: “Australia’s Crimes Act 1914 sets out a range of safeguards to protect the rights of a person who has been arrested for a Commonwealth offence including a terrorism offence. These safeguards include the right to communicate with a friend or relative, and a legal practitioner of the person’s choice. If the person is not an Australian citizen, they are afforded the right to communicate with the Consular office of the country of which the person is a citizen, before questioning commences”.
And to make absolutely clear to Lankan minds that the Wizards of Oz were far above when it came to matters of judicial independence, the Australian High Commission couldn’t held but condescendingly declare to native dullards that “In Australia’s justice system, the charges against a person are tested in a court of law by an independent judiciary and the prosecution bears the onus of proving the offence beyond reasonable doubt.”
But the question is whether Kamer was afforded the same rights available to an Australian citizen the ‘ the right to communicate with a friend or relative, and a legal practitioner of the person’s choice’ or only the right a second class student visitor to this dingo land down under to only have access to the Lankan consulate office in Australia, which, as President Sirisena found to his frustration when he called the Austrian consulate last week and received no answer to his rings on six lines, may well fail to answer the SOS from a Lankan student in distress.
Apparently not. According to family, friends and legal advisers in Colombo, Kamer was denied natural justice the civilised world knows of, pays obeisance to and takes cognizance of. The story that initially rose from down under dregs was this:
• He was denied access to a lawyer - which the Australian High Commission told the Sunday Times two weeks ago – the right of any person accused and arrested to have the right to communicate with his or her legal practitioner of his or her choice’.
• He was denied the supposed Aussie safeguard to communicate with a friend or relative, denied even the chance to meet a representative of the Lankan consulate.
Instead he was sent to solitary confinement, cut out from the world, denied legal counsel, bereft of family and friends’ comfort, left in some dinghy Australian dingo den to wait justice to unlock his prison padlock, if it ever came.
If that is still the jurisprudence of the Australian legal system and the cavalier way in which they practise and treat a human being of whatever origin whilst preaching the moral word to the world, no wonder the British kicked their ancestors out two hundred years ago and cast to the waters the foul jetsam to drift furthermost from the western hemisphere, and thus help keep their sceptred isle pristine without the dregs, the flotsam set adrift from drifting back.
Now, however, an aunt of Kamer has come forward to state, “I was told that he had refused any legal representation at the time of his arrest, since he was under the impression that he could give them a statement and leave. He had nothing to hide.” She also added: “He has everything to lose and nothing to gain from such radical affiliations,” the aunt said insisting “I am sure that my nephew has been framed by someone for reasons still unknown.
His influential family in Lanka, both politically and legally, is not taking the affair lying down but is actively working to prove his innocence. “They have absolutely nothing to link him to terrorism,” his aunt is reported to have told the
Sunday Observer, adding that he was a normal God-fearing boy. A petition for the release of the Sri Lankan student has been started by the Change.org.”
On Tuesday the family and friends of Kamer swung to action and kept a dusk vigil at Independence Square. A statement from the family read at the protest said Nizamdeen was allowed to contact one family member immediately after the arrest but was then denied access to legal counsel or family members.
The statement read by Nizamdeen's uncle, Kaleel Cassim, said the family is alarmed by a lack of information.
"We accordingly call upon the Australian government to ensure that investigations into allegations against Kamer are concluded expeditiously, and that he is guaranteed the right to communicate regularly with his family.” The statement also asserted Kamer’s right to receive advice from his attorney as is the right of any one, living in a land which subscribes to the basic concepts of the democracy and do not advertise it by paying mere lip service but demonstrate their faith and adherence to its tenets by practice and earn the right to be treated a member of the civilised nations of the world. The placards held by protesters read "He has been framed" and "Kamer is innocent."
No family member who embraces his innocence or any friend who espouses his absence of guilt or any school ma’m who gives a character certificate of good behaviour as testimony to Kamer’s still
preserved virginity not to have flirted with Muslim fanaticism and lost his maidenhead in the process can set him free. Only a court of justice, be it Australian, can determine his innocence or guilt.
And, rightly, even whilst the placards displayed at Independence Square proclaimed from afar ‘ Kamer’s innocent, ‘ Kamer is framed’ be it right or be it wrong, as Kamer’s uncle Cassim rightly pointed out in the statement he read on behalf of the family, ‘"We accordingly call upon the Australian government to ensure that investigations into allegations against Kamer are concluded expeditiously.” And the hope will remain in us all that justice will be done. So did Kamer’s mother’s sister’s husband the present Minister of Sports Faiszer Musthapha state he had faith in the Australian judicial system and that justice will prevail for Kamer, perhaps in the same manner Australia’s former prime minister was taken to task but later excused for failing to declare to the Australian Parliament his acceptance of diamond studded cufflinks given by former president Rajapaksa for adorning the Rajapaksa hosted Colombo CHOGM in 2013.
But one thing irks. If it had been an Australian citizen – for instance a young man involved in research at the Colombo University to gain his doctorate, in the same manner that Kamer was engaged in at his Sydney university – who was accused and arrested by the Lankan police of being involved in some terrorist activity on the flimsy basis of some scribbling made on some note book, wouldn’t the Australian Government through its High Commission here have lodged a strong protest to the Lankan Foreign Ministry, raised a huge hue and cry on the world platform and accused the Lankan government of gross violation of human rights of keeping one of their citizens in custody without, at least, allowing him his liberty on bail, till proper charges were framed against him and indicted in court?
Wouldn’t the Aussies not have stooped then to say that their citizen haa been remanded and deprived of his liberty by some Lankan Kangaroo Court, even though no kangaroos exist in Lanka, unlike in Australia which boasts plenty, some of them hopping amok, even on the bewigged benches and in the corridors of its law enforcement agencies.
But the question is whether Kamer was afforded the same rights available to an Australian citizen, ‘the right to communicate with a friend or relative or only the right a second class student visitor to this dingo land down under to only have access to the Lankan consulate office in Australia
Nizamdeen was allowed to contact one family member immediately after the arrest but was then denied access to legal counsel or family members.