The barrister at the centre of one of Australia’s highest-profile terrorism cases speaks about his own brush with the Federal Police, being president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and his ongoing fight for justice. Leanne Mezrani reports.

Stephen Keim was a relatively unknown barrister working out of a small private practice in Brisbane when Dr Mohammed Haneef was arrested in connection with the failed terror attacks in Britain in 2007.

But representing Dr Haneef throughout the arrest, closed hearings and action by immigration officials propelled Keim into the media spotlight. 

“Acting for Dr Haneef was my 15 minutes in the sun,” he says. “But it was a lot more than I was entitled to actually,” he adds, rather modestly.

The case marked the first time legislative provisions introduced to respond to the threat of terrorism were used or, Keim argues, misused. This opinion, coupled with Keim’s inability to ignore what he believed to be an injustice, gave him another 15 minutes in the media spotlight.

Keim was investigated in 2007 in relation to the leaking of a 142-page transcript of an interview of Dr Haneef by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to The Australian newspaper.

Mick Keelty, the AFP commissioner at the time, accused Keim of breaching his ethical obligations as a barrister by leaking a record of interview which had not been tendered to the court in evidence.

But even Keim could not have anticipated how pivotal the release of the transcript would be to the case. Intense media scrutiny forced the director of public prosecutions to review the case and, ultimately, drop terrorism charges against Dr Haneef. Keim was also cleared of any wrongdoing in 2008.

The investigation, while nerve-racking, has provided the Brisbane barrister with a compelling story to tell the university students he lectures. “It was a drama for a while but now I can use the case to talk to students about ethics,” he says.

Since the Haneef case, Keim has continued to attract publicity for being a human rights advocate.

He was awarded the Human Rights Medal by the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2009 and in 2010 he was elected as president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR).

The ill treatment of suspects like Dr Haneef by authorities is one of a number of human rights issues Keim is pestering the Australian government about on behalf of ALHR.

He cites the handling of asylum seekers as a problem that “keeps coming up”.

“It’s of importance, not only because they are very vulnerable people who seem to be demonised in one way or another, but also because we have long-standing international obligations.”

Keim is referring to the Refugee Convention (the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees), which places responsibility on the Australian government for ensuring refugees are not returned to countries where their life or freedom would be threatened by their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group.

Another matter on the ALHR agenda is marriage equality. “Even gay people in the ‘80s probably couldn’t have predicted this would be a matter of human rights importance but it fits very much within the paradigm of equality before the law,”  says Keim.

Raising concerns

While the ALHR has made public its opinion on these and other human rights issues, Keim stresses the organisation doesn’t fix problems. Rather, it raises and articulates issues to put them on the agenda of bodies that can instigate change.

So when the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee of the Senate calls Keim regarding a piece of legislation, which may be encouraging or concerning from the point of view of ALHR, he tries to give a well-argued, well-documented and well-researched submission.

Established in 1992, ALHR has “a pretty good history” of maintaining a dialogue with government on Australia’s international human rights obligations, continues Keim. He also believes ALHR has been effective in not only assisting the government to comply with its obligations but also promoting the signing and ratification of further documents.

“That’s our proudest boast. We’ve been in there providing information that governments can act upon if they want to,” he says, adding that he is “just one person who’s part of maintaining that tradition”.

When asked about the law he practises outside of ALHR, Keim says it is a difficult question to answer. “I don’t really know what kind of lawyer I am – my practice is quite broad.” 

He is still working as a barrister from his private practice in Brisbane, which has been located in the same building since 1985. 

Keim’s practice is varied and includes criminal defence work. He believes all lawyers, particularly criminal defence lawyers funded by Legal Aid, are champions of human rights.

“I regard doing my job well as contributing to a legal justice system by which people’s human rights are protected,” he says. “The rule of law is so important that every lawyer that does a good and competent job, no matter who they’re acting for, is supporting the cause of human rights.”

Keim says more young lawyers are adopting this view due to a greater emphasis on international human rights law in the university curriculum. He describes the generation of lawyers that has studied international human rights instruments and is able to quote the jurisprudence as “consciously interested in human rights”.

Keim muses about his own university experience, revealing that he studied law in the mid ‘70s when the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic and Cultural Rights were just starting to be adopted around the world.

Interestingly, law was not Keim’s first choice of university course. In fact, it wasn’t even his second choice. He admits that he secretly wanted to study English literature but enrolled in medicine instead. 

Keim says he quickly realised medicine wasn’t his calling and decided to study law. 

“I was intending on doing an arts degree majoring in English so I could read novels all the time, but I couldn’t get away with that.

“I chose law because it was an excuse to read books – political books.”

He may have “fallen into law”, but Keim is pleased he did.

Despite his myriad responsibilities,  he still reads political books, mostly in his spare time. “This will make me really sound boring but sometimes I read cases from around the world that deal with issues like Habeas Corpus petitions of Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States.”