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ASIO has stood their ground since it made its first adverse security assessment against Iranian Sheikh Mansour Leghaei and blocked his attempt to become an Australian citizen. ASIO is not required to disclose any information it has on Iranian Sheikh. As a non-citizen, the High Court also ruled out that Dr. Mansour Leghaei had no right to be told as why ASIO suspected him. Matter of national security prevailed above any rights Mansour Leghaei might have to procedural fairness.
Mansour Leghaei admitted he took two payments from Iranian sources and donation from the Iranian Embassy in 1999, despite of all these he still denied any link with Tehran. Clues include a translation of his student notes on jihad, which ASIO admitted was flawed and which, Dr Leghaei complained, inserted inflammatory material about the killing of infidels.
ASIO found $10,000 in his luggage in 1995, which he said he was carrying as a donation from Iran to an Islamic centre in Melbourne. When ASIO’s questioned him about a suspected terrorist organisation in France called Ahlul Bayt. Mansour Leghaei said he knew nothing of such group but had opened an education centre in Nigeria in 1992 called Ahlul Bayt, a common term meaning ”house of the prophet”.