Australian authorities dropped terrorism charges against a Sydney medical student on Monday. Izhar Ul-Haque, 24, had been charged with receiving weapons training in 2003 from the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Toiba. The case was dropped after police interviews with him were ruled inadmissible in court.New South Wales Supreme Court judge Michael Adams said officers from the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) had kidnapped and falsely imprisoned Ul-Haque during their investigations.“It was a gross interference by the agents of the state with the accused’s legal rights as a citizen, rights which he still has whether he be suspected of criminal conduct or not, and whether he is Muslim or not,” Adams said.The development is a further blow to Australia’s tough stand on national security after prosecutors in July dropped charges against an Indian doctor, saying they made a mistake by charging him with supporting terrorism.Australia, a close ally of the United States, has never suffered a major peacetime attack on home soil and has gradually toughened anti-terrorism laws since 2001. In August the courts ruled that police had the right to impose strict limits on people suspected of links to militant organisations.Ul-Haque’s lawyer, Adam Houda, described the prosecution as flawed from the start. “From the beginning, this was no more than a show trial designed to justify the billions of dollars spent on counter-terrorism, It has been one bungled prosecution after another.”
