Deported-pilot case looks like a 'Guantanamo Bay', says Locke

Keith Locke

Green MP Keith Locke is continuing to defend deported pilot Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, saying the case is looking like "New Zealand's Guantanamo Bay".

He says he is concerned at a weekend report that the family of Mr Ali have not been able to contact him since he was expelled from New Zealand on May 30.

The MP said he would ask the Government whether it delivered Ali to Saudi Arabian authorities.

"The Ali case is looking more and more like NZ's Guantanamo Bay, in that Mr Ali has been rendered back to Saudi Arabia purely because of suspicious circumstances."

Mr Ali had flatted with the 9/11 terrorist hijacker Hani Hanjour, said to have flown into the Pentagon, and sought entry to New Zealand ostensibly to further study English when his command of the language was very good. He approached North Shore and Ardmore flying schools in March and April, asking a receptionist at Ardmore to falsely write that he was a student there so he could alter his visa, which ran out on May 21.

At the time he was deported - under rarely used national security provisions of the Immigration Act - he had been flying at the Manawatu Aero Club in Palmerston North in the hope of getting a commercial pilot's licence.

Prime Minister Helen Clark told Parliament last week: "Personally I consider it a no-brainer. Someone who has been a room-mate of a 9/11 terrorist and is having pilot training is here for no particularly good purpose."

Mr Locke said: "The Prime Minister's brain should now be telling her that Mr Ali volunteered information to the FBI after September 11, was not arrested or deported ... "