The circumstances faced by Dr Mohammed Haneef had a number of important characteristics. First, the mere mention of a terrorism offence raises a level of hysteria and prejudice that is absent from many criminal allegations. Haneef's lawyer, Peter Russo, perhaps without thinking too much about it, dealt with this prejudice in a very effective way. Assisted by working journalists who were already beginning to become sceptical about a system that arrested but refused to charge with an offence, Mr Russo, in a very calm and honest way, turned an anonymous terrorism suspect into a detainee with an identity; a family; with feelings; with ongoing day-to-day experiences; a personality and, eventually, a human face. Mr Russo did this by spending time with his client and by answering questions in a straightforward manner without the hint of spin.

Second, Dr Haneef had arrayed against him a new set of powers which had, apparently, not been previously used. These were being conducted neither in open court nor in a forum to which any rules of non-publication applied. There was enormous public interest in what was going on. It was also clear from my first conversation with the police officers bringing the application for further detention time, Mr Simms and Mr Rendina, that their view of the amount of detention that was appropriate and likely to be authorised by the legislation extended to multiples of weeks, perhaps months. Dr Haneef's reputation was also being attacked by continuing unsourced stories, apparently from law enforcement sources.

Third, in retrospect, the decision to continue to detain Dr Haneef after the conclusion of his first interview is neither explainable nor justifiable by law enforcement reasoning. The decision to charge after the second interview is even less justifiable since two weeks of investigation had failed, even more obviously, to yield a scintilla of a case against Dr Haneef capable of going before a jury. One does not have to take my word for these conclusions. The decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Damien Bugg, confirms them.

The question that has to be answered by future inquiries is how those decisions came to be so wrongly made. If the answer is that politics intruded into the law enforcement process, then the fundamental objectivity of law enforcement decision-making on which our society's rule of law is based has been corrupted and a new era of law enforcement based on political considerations has begun.

Fourth, it became much more explicit that Dr Haneef's freedom was being determined by decisions made away from the law enforcement system on Monday, 16 July 2007 when the decision of the bail magistrate was trumped by the decision of the Minister for Immigration to cancel Dr Haneef's visa. It became, expressly, the case that my client's freedom and well-being were now being decided by political decisions made by the Executive. The political dimension of this decision making process is not diminished by the current litigation. Mr Andrews predicts the current litigation is destined for the High Court. At the end of the day, however, the High Court will only decide whether a decision made by Mr Andrews in the past was lawful. The day after a High Court decision in Dr Haneef's favour, in fact, knowing Mr Andrews as I do, probably the same day, Mr Andrews would be free to seek another briefing from law enforcement agencies and would be free to make a fresh political decision to cancel Dr Haneef's visa. Whether or not that happens is in the realm of politics and not in the realm of the courts and the law.

My fifth observation is that the political decision to cancel Dr Haneef's visa has never been and is not able to be subject to any review on the merits in any independent Court or Tribunal. It is trite law that the limited judicial review available in respect of decisions of the Minister pursuant to s.501 of the Migration Act 1958 ("the Migration Act") does not involve any consideration of the factual merits.

The lawyers have and will continue to debate the correctness of the minister's decision by reference to facts that everyone would now acknowledge are wrong, such as the allegation that Dr Haneef lived with his cousin, Sabeel, at 13 Bentley Road, Liverpool. Even after the hearing at first instance in the Federal Court, counsel for the Commonwealth made references to acknowledged incorrect facts to support his client's application for a stay of Justice Spender's decision to set aside the Minister's decision as unlawful.

Dr Haneef's case is not yet over. He can only be freed from his nightmare by an Australian Minister for Immigration restoring his immigration rights on a full and unconditional basis. That process may take years of lobbying and litigation.

The lessons from Dr Haneef's experiences will take years to emerge fully. I would expect that those lessons will include the need to review the Migration Act and reverse the years of legislative energy devoted to removing the rule of law from our migration law and replacing it with unaccountable and opaquely political exercises of Executive discretion.

As the prosecutorial decisions in Dr Haneef's case strongly suggest, the removal of the rule of law from one part of our society's operations provides a conduit for their removal from other aspects of our life.

Stephen Keim, Senior Council, has been a barrister for 22 years. This year, he gained some notoriety when he acted for Dr Mohamed Haneef.