Maori activists cleared of demanding cash from motel

Sue Wyliam Nikora and Elijah Matenga are cleared of accusations of using threats to get money. Picture / Alan Gibson

Two members of a self-styled Maori security force have been cleared of demanding money from a Gisborne motelier with menaces.

After a depositions hearing at the Gisborne District Court, JPs ruled that Sue Wyliam Nikora, 69, who calls herself the "Prime Minister of the Sovereign Government of Aotearoa", and Elijah Matenga, 32, had no case to answer.

But the pair will return to court on November 16 to face lesser charges. Matenga has pleaded not guilty to three counts of impersonating police and Nikora not guilty to supplying police uniforms to the impersonators.

The court was told that the more serious charge arose after a complaint from a Gisborne motelier who had been visited by Matenga, wearing a shirt embellished with the words Maori Police, and a male associate on June 30 this year.

The motelier said the men who approached him had been calm and polite throughout but they were physically large and their presence was somehow "pseudo Mafia".

The motelier said Matenga presented documents outlining a proposal for rent to be paid to the sovereign government instead of normal council rate payments.

The suggestion that businesses would be visited only three times before an eviction order was issued had a "three strikes and you are out" type of feel to the proposal, the motelier told the court.

The men told him that Prime Minister Helen Clark, Gisborne district police commander Waata Shepherd, and Mayor Meng Foon had been notified of the activity.

Asked in cross-examination by defence counsel Nick Taylor if he watched too much television, the motelier replied: "Yes."

Mr Taylor then suggested that was why the motelier had likened the approach by the two men to one by the Mafia. He put it to the motelier that Matenga had previously been a salesman and the approach he had used was that of a door-to-door salesperson.

There was nothing specifically demanding in any of the documents, and none contained the sort of language normally associated with demands such as that used in tax bills and water rate invoices.

- NZPA