Eamonn Deverall: Zaoui's battle only half won

Opinion

Detention without trial is inherently dangerous to democracy. For this reason the decision to grant Ahmed Zaoui bail is a victory. However, the risk remains that larger issues will be forgotten.

I have come to know Ahmed over the course of Sunday afternoon visits in the sterile confines of Auckland Central Remand Prison. I started visiting just over a year ago, after he had been released from 11 months of non-voluntary segregation, the bureaucratic euphemism for solitary confinement.

Reading about distant cases of political imprisonment is sadly an integral part of studying political science and Latin American studies, and I was first interested in the case by the similarities to so many Latin American tragedies that I saw reflected in Algeria.

You can look at the politics of it as much as you like, but the human element will always be more important. One of a small group of university students who had now become involved, I believe that my shaky French managed to bump me up the queue for a visit.

I was not sure who I was expecting to meet when I first arrived at the prison. Dreading awkward silences, I presumed that someone angry and depressed would be waiting.

I could not have been more wrong.

Ahmed describes himself as a fatalist and an optimist, but it was the latter quality that impressed me most. It has been a privilege to have been able to debate and discuss politics and the state of the world each week with a true intellectual.

The surreal ritual of passing through metal detectors and two heavy security doors to discuss Foucault, Sartre and other theories of freedom and control was not lost on either of us. The sight of inmates introducing their children to Ahmed mixed surrealism with irony, given the two years that have passed since Ahmed last saw his own children.

There is no doubt that much-overdue justice was served by the Supreme Court. Ahmed needed to get out of that place.

His missing fingernails and pale skin are external signs of internal trauma, of the hard decade since the coup leading him to this less-than-pleasant Antipodean experience.

But it is important not to let yesterday's success become a hollow victory. Mr Zaoui has not been freed, and his case is far from over. The deeply flawed security risk certificate review process marches on a precarious safety net that has proved to be a system combining the worst of Orwell and Python.

Calm and measured voices on this issue have often had to struggle to be heard over raucous, poll-driven chest-beating. A man without even a shred of bitterness, Ahmed has disproved many prejudices and doubts of mine. Now his calm and measured voice should be able to reply to the diatribes directed against him.

* Eamonn Deverall is a recent political science graduate from University of Auckland and a part-time editorial research assistant at the Herald.