DAR AL HARB - AUSTRALIA: VISA APPLICANTS TO AUSTRALIA WILL HAVE THEIR PERSONAL BACKGROUND & FINANCIAL DETAILS SCRUTINIZED BY ASIO

Check to foil terrorists
by Stephanie Peatling and Malcolm Brown

A HIGH-TECH program to detect possible terrorists before they come here has been accelerated as the Federal Government steps up border protection in response to the British bombing attempts.

From September all applicants for a visa to Australia will have their personal background and financial details scrutinised by software linking ASIO and the Department of Immigration. It will highlight suspicious personal histories and movements. As fresh warnings of a terrorist attack in Indonesia were issued, the Prime Minister, John Howard, said the new border security measures would "give us extraordinary additional capacity to drill down into the backgrounds of people who seek to come to Australia".

"This system, I am told, is better than any border control system of its kind elsewhere. It will enable us to access the background behaviour of people … and track patterns of travel and other behaviour which suggests a predisposition on the part of somebody towards maligned behaviour."

The new system will allow the two agencies in charge of border security to detect possible similarities in the histories of known terrorists and then search for those patterns in the case histories of visa applicants.

The deadline for the release on the Gold Coast of Dr Mohamed Haneef, being questioned in relation to the Glasgow bombings, remains unclear. A federal police spokesman said that although the 96 hours Dr Haneef could be held without charge would expire at 7pm today, anti-terrorism laws allowed him to be held for a further unspecified time.

Police searched Dr Haneef's home yesterday.

Channel Nine reported last night that part of the federal police investigation focused on Dr Haneef's financial transactions and whether large sums of money were sent overseas that might have been used to fund terrorist activities. Six other men were questioned over the bombing attempts but later released.

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, and federal police both dismissed yesterday British media reports that there had been plans to detonate a bomb detected outside a London nightclub by using mobile phones in Australia.

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