Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File - Episode 8, Dirty Tricks

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 8, Dirty Secrets.

When Ahmed Zaoui came to New Zealand, he was labelled one of the world's most dangerous terrorists.

It took five years and some painstaking detective work in Europe by his lawyer Deborah Manning to establish that the Algerian ex-politician was the victim of a giant dirty tricks campaign by his opponents in the military government.

"The Algerian Security Services decided to put out misinformation that actually Mr Zaoui was the leader of the GIA [an Algerian terrorist group]," says Manning in the podcast Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File.

"And they started contaminating the French Security Services information and then France was giving it to Belgium."

Manning's research established conclusively that the persecution and misinformation campaign dated back to 1991, when Zaoui, a popular religious scholar, was persuaded to stand for office in Algeria's first multi-party election.

Soon after that election, Ahmed Zaoui's world changed forever. As other members of the same Algerian political party, FIS, were rounded up by the military government, he fled in fear for his life - first to Morocco, then to France where he was joined in exile by his wife and sons.

The family was forced to keep moving to Belgium, Switzerland, Burkina Faso in West Africa, and finally on to Malaysia where he obtained the false passport that would bring him to New Zealand.

Manning and her colleague Richard McLeod realised they needed to understand everything about Zaoui's life as an international fugitive if they were to defend him at the upcoming hearing before the Inspector General of Security and Intelligence.

That hearing – which would either affirm or set aside the Government's security risk certificate – would decide whether their client lived or died.

If he was deported back to Algeria, his lawyers feared that he would be tortured and killed.

Ahmed Zaoui arrives with his lawyer, Debarah Manning, for the review over his security risk certificate in July 2007. Photo / Dean Purcell

What was harder for both of them was that this case was no longer a job for them.

Up until Deborah Manning's trip to Europe both lawyers – despite their statements to the media – had retained a lawyerly scepticism about their client's guilt or innocence.

"I didn't necessarily know who Mr Zaoui was for the first couple of years," Manning says. "I knew what the evidence was and I could speak to that. But it wasn't until my six-week trip to Europe that I was personally convinced.

"I never talked about my own personal convictions or beliefs in the media because ... I was always clear in my mind that I was his lawyer.

"But as time went on my own personal beliefs about the man changed during this case."

McLeod felt the same way.

"I became convinced on the evidence before me that this man was innocent," he says. "That this man was actually the victim of a massive disinformation campaign by powers that he could never fight. That the odds were completely stacked against him.

"It galvanises you into action. It becomes your motivation because you really do believe in his case."

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