BY JONATHAN STRAUSS
SYDNEY — NSW police officers subjected the Mufti of Australia and Imam of the Lakemba mosque, Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly, to demands for a body search on January 6.
According to al Hilaly's lawyer, Stephen Hopper, as a result of the incident al Hilaly is planning to "claim ... unlawful arrest, unlawful detention and assault" against the police. The police are threatening to charge al Hilaly and Ahmed Cheitah with assaulting police.
A police officer stopped al Hilaly on a major road of a suburb near the mosque, allegedly because some tubing protruded from a window of the car al Hilaly was driving.
The January 9 Australian reported, however, that NSW police minister Michael Costa has since said an attempt to search al Hilaly began because police had access to four-year-old reports, probably provided by the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation, claiming al Hilaly carried a gun. When al Hilaly was subsequently arrested, he was searched: the police do not claim to have found a weapon.
Hopper told Green Left Weekly, that these matters were "unrelated". He said, "the police action should be called into question, rather than the sheikh's. A number of officers acted, in our view, beyond their powers."
Hopper and others supporting al Hilaly, such as Keysar Trad from the Lebanese Muslim Association, have stressed they believe the incident to be "an isolated [one involving] an isolated officer".
This incident has occurred, however, in the context of both a continuing "law and order" hysteria, supported by the state Labor government, directed in particular against people of Lebanese descent in Sydney and the actions and rhetoric of the federal Coalition and state ALP governments' "war against terror".
Trad told Green Left Weekly that the incident is an "issue of grave concern", but as he also told the ABC's 7.30 Report, "some elements on talkback [radio] ... are focusing on an issue and twisting it out of perspective ... they should be careful in what they're doing".
Sydney's talkback radio, and the tabloid Daily Telegraph, have given significant coverage to the story.
From Green Left Weekly, January 15, 2003.
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