Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File - Episode 6, Crescent and Cross

What do you do when the state locks you in jail and calls you a terrorist - but refuses to say why? John Keir tells the inside story behind New Zealand's biggest security scandal in Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File. Today: Episode 6, Crescent and Cross.

"Do you fellas still give sanctuary?"

That was the question Deborah Manning had for a group of Dominican priests in central Auckland.

She had a problem. If she was ever to get her high-profile client Ahmed Zaoui out of prison, she needed to find a suitable bail address for him.

The Algerian asylum seeker was said to be the leader of an outlawed Islamic group responsible for bombings in Paris in 1995. The New Zealand SIS said it had secret and compelling evidence against him.

Deborah Manning needed to convince the Supreme Court that New Zealand's infamous 'enemy of the state' and arguably our highest profile prisoner wasn't a danger to society.

So where could he go?

"And I thought to myself, some priests. What about ... the Catholic priests?" Deborah Manning remembers in the podcast Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File.

So she phoned Father Chris Loughnan, a member of the Dominican Order in Newton, and asked whether the Catholic friary would be willing to give Ahmed Zaoui a safe refuge until the security risk certificate could be considered.

The question began a surprising friendship between a man accused of being a violent Islamic extremist and a group of Dominican friars whose world was about to be turned upside down.

"It was almost like living in a public square," Father Chris explains, remembering the army of volunteers who arrived to help.

He believes the priory was bugged.

"How much we were being spied on was a real question. I suspect it was never beyond tapped phones, which they can do so easily. But we'd lived as though there was a bug in the house."

Ahmed Zaoui breaks down at a press conference held at the Dominican Friary in Newton on the morning of his first day out of prison for over two years. Photo / Amos Chapple

Manning was more worried that her client was now "a sitting duck" for anyone who might want to attack him or try to frame him. So she set about creating a human wall around him.

"We had a massive volunteer crew, between 30 and 50 people, I think.

"What we did was set up a roster, every day for the whole time he was there. We had someone looking after the door with a logbook and answering the phone.

"He never answered the door once. He was always chaperoned the entire time to protect him against, you know, being compromised."

Ahmed Zaoui spent nearly three years living with Father Chris and the other Dominican friars – a period he today describes with great gratitude, as the men from two different religions lived together happily.

"Father Chris is a funny, funny father," he says, laughing.

"Every moment with him, we making joke. We talking about religious things. But always in some ironic way.

"He is a great man. He give me a lot of help."

Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File was made with the support of NZ On Air.