July 2 2002 – The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Bill Blick, is under pressure to deal with a complaint that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation conducted an illegal search of a unit in Sydney.
On September 27 last year, several weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, a team of ASIO officers and police staged two raids in the Sydney suburb of Mascot.
They were seeking information about a young Muslim, an Australian citizen in his early 20s with an Arabic name, who had spent some time in Pakistan.
On May 8, 2002, Mr Blick received a letter from the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, which alleged that when ASIO raided the unit in Tramway Lane, Mascot, where the young man and his wife were living, it had carried out an illegal search.
According to the young man’s lawyer, Steven Hopper, and Cameron Murphy, president of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, ASIO used a warrant with the wrong address on it.
The address on the warrant was the house of the man’s father, who lives in Gardeners Road, Mascot.
The ASIO team had gone to the Gardeners Road address first, Mr Hopper said, and when they could not find the young man, his father took them to the Tramway Lane address.
His father apparently knocked on the door of his son’s unit, and at the same time, a police officer threatened to blow off the door unless it was opened. The son opened the door and the police entered with their guns drawn, Mr Hopper said.
The young man’s wife had been in Australia for four days, having just arrived from Lebanon. The man claims his wife has had a miscarriage since the raid.
ASIO conducts most of its search warrants covertly, and the office of the inspector-general rarely receives complaints that ASIO officers raided a house with the wrong warrant, a trespass offence.
On May 1, ASIO officers visited Mr Hopper’s office and showed Mr Hopper the warrant; he said it had had the wrong address on it.
Mr Blick would not comment on the incident yesterday, nor would he confirm a complaint had been lodged with him.