Conflict over terrorist report

Press, 13 March 1982, Page 9

Conflict over terrorist report

NZPA ' Brisbane A confidential police report given to the Australian Prime Minister. Mr Fraser, named some of the Aborigi-nal-rights activists allegedly planning to receive terrorist training in Libya to disrupt the Commonwealth Games, in Brisbane, according to a senior Queensland Government officer. He said that he believed the Federal police had also been briefed on the report. He emphasised that the report had been written using information from a number of sources and that that information had not been substantiated yet. . The report also highlighted concern that Aboriginals were being incited to violence during the Games by white and part-Aboriginal activists. The report was believed also to name those activists. Queensland’s Police Minister, Russ Hinze, refused to table the police report in the state’s Parliament on Thursday. He said outside Parliament that there were conflicting statements being made by Aboriginal leaders about the alleged Libyan terrorist training. He said “The Aboriginal leaders have not done their people any good by conflicting statements on this issue. Some Aboriginal leaders have denied any knowledge of the Libyan visit but others have confirmed it.” Mr Hinze said that statements by Aboriginal leaders that “blood would flow in the streets” during the Games had done nothing to ease the situation. The director of the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action, Bob Weatherall, said that the police report was a deliberate fabrication. He said, “Myself, Mick Miller, and Steve Mam (other Aboriginal leaders) are going to Africa in May but we are going nowhere near Libya: we are only going to Com-' monwealth countries.” The purpose of the visit was to educate black nations about the “downtrodden position” of Queensland’s blacks.