On 18 April, 200 federal and state police officers raided seven houses in Melbourne, arresting five young men. The pretext for the raids was preventing an imminent terrorist attack. Victorian acting chief commissioner Tim Cartwright alleged that the young men “planned to carry out atrocious acts on Anzac Day”.

The subsequent media frenzy, however, has already dramatically obscured the known facts of the case.

Of five, three have been charged, two with terrorism-related offences. But neither has been charged with preparing an attack or planning an attack. The charge is “conspiracy to commit acts done in preparation for, or planning, terrorist acts”.

This is thought crime. For instance, “conspiracy” could be telling someone that you’re going to Google something. Or perhaps more specifically, a Muslim telling someone that he’s going to Google something.

For the first time in Victoria, police used a Preventative Detention Order to detain one of the men, an 18 year old from Hampton Park. Such orders give police the power to detain someone for up to 14 days without charge. This man was held in custody for three days before being released and re-arrested and charged.

His father alleges that, during the initial police raid, officers beat his son, breaking his arm and ribs.

Another arrestee, Aboriginal teenager Eathan Cruse, was viciously assaulted by police during one of the other raids. His father Glen told Fairfax Media that police gave him a “boot right in the head and they said, ‘Shut up, you Abo’, and I could hear Eathan … getting knocked out cold”.

His sister told Fairfax how she “woke up to a sniper pointing [a gun] at my head at 4am … We had all of them come into the house, they kicked-in the doors, tear gas was used and they cleared each room. They pulled my nine-year-old brother out of his bed”. His mother Anja said that after they were done with Eathan “there was a pool of blood on the floor”.

The events contain an echo of the Guildford Four case – young Irish wrongly convicted of terrorism in 1975. All of the evidence used against them was obtained under torture by British police while the four were held without charge. It took until 1991 for their names to be cleared.

According to professor Greg Barton from the Global Terrorism Research Centre, speaking on ABC radio on 20 April, information gained from someone subject to a Preventative Detention Order “can’t be used in subsequent legal proceedings”. But the charges against these two men and the police powers used are among the most draconian in the Western world. Exactly what was said and done to the young injured man while he was in custody we may never know, but we should assume the treatment was awful. After all, if the police were prepared to break his arm and ribs in his own house – where there were witnesses – what might they be emboldened to do in private?

Gerry Conlon, one of the Guilford Four, in 2009 compared his case to the modern treatment of Muslims: “What has been happening in Britain since 2005 has created the same sort of conditions that helped to lead to our arrest. The same procedures are being followed – arrest as many as you can and present a circumstantial case in the hope that at least some of them will be convicted.”

We don’t know what the two young Melbourne men were thinking. But Conlon’s words, and the nature of the current charges, should give anyone pause before leaping to the conclusions that the police, the media and the political right want us to.

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