Hour of SIS Zaoui videotape goes 'missing'

By CATHERINE MASTERS

Ahmed Zaoui was secretly videotaped by the SIS and the police during a seven-hour interview when he arrived more than a year ago - but an hour of the tape's sound has mysteriously gone "missing".

The SIS has the classified tape, but the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, Laurie Greig, was apparently not told it existed. It is understood he has not subsequently seen the tape or heard the missing hour.

Justice Greig is supposed to have access to all classified information in his review of the Algerian's security risk certificate, which was the subject of High Court action this week.

After Justice Greig was made aware of the tape - apparently by Mr Zaoui's lawyers during a telephone conference - the SIS provided him with written reports instead. These were based on handwritten notes taken at the time, which the service has destroyed.

There is also concern about the quality of the tape and that the service apparently did not have the technology to pixilate officers' faces or transfer the recording to a VHS format.

Confusion also surrounds who was responsible for the interview, the police or the SIS.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that New Zealand's ties with France may also be a key to Mr Zaoui's time behind bars.

An intelligence analyst said that was a result of France's strong relationship with Algeria.

Mr Zaoui's lawyers, Deborah Manning and Richard McLeod, are considering lodging a complaint of serious misconduct with the Police Complaints Authority and may also complain to Justice Greig over the SIS tape.

But they are also planning to ask Justice Greig to stand down over public comments about asylum seekers which they believe show bias against their client.

A former Australian spy, Andrew Wilkie, says it is unbelievable for a country's espionage service to lose an hour of such an important video interview conducted within days of the touchdown on New Zealand soil of a man who at that stage it was feared was a dangerous terrorist.

Mr Wilkie, who quit his job with the Australian secret service in March in protest at the way he believed that country's Government was distorting intelligence to justify the Iraq war, supplied an affidavit in Mr Zaoui's High Court judicial review this week.

Of the tape, he told the Weekend Herald: "I don't think shoddy's the explanation because your intelligence and security services, they're first rate.

"They're a competent crew and I would not believe an explanation that it was just shoddy work, that doesn't sound like them.

"There is no satisfactory outcome to this, because either the Government is playing games, or if the security intelligence services are as amateurish as is being implied, well, that's just as worrying for New Zealand."

The SIS and the police were tight-lipped yesterday. Prime Minister Helen Clark, the minister in charge of the SIS, is in Nigeria.

Mr McLeod and Ms Manning have been trying to get a copy of the video for their client, who has spent more than a year in jail.

The Refugee Status Appeals Authority has found Mr Zaoui to be a genuine refugee and severely criticised the unclassified information provided to it by the SIS.

Mr Zaoui's lawyers would not comment, but released copies of letters between them, SIS lawyers and the police. In one they ask for clarification whether it was a police or an SIS interview, or a joint interview, as both organisations appear to say it was the other's interview.

Mr McLeod writes that if it was a joint interview "we fail to see how your client [the SIS] can seek to lay responsibility for violations of Mr Zaoui's rights at the door of the police".

He says Mr Zaoui was not told the interview was "secretly and unlawfully being taped and audio recorded" and he was not told he had the right to have a lawyer present.

In a letter from the SIS lawyers, Mr Zaoui's lawyers are told they can view the video in certain conditions - but that about an hour of the audio was "missing" and the overall quality of the recording, "which was done on a police machine", was poor.

Another SIS lawyer writes that there was concern about identifying security officers' faces in the video but said the service did not have the technology or equipment to pixilate faces or transfer the recording to VHS.

Ms Manning writes: "The claim that the Security Intelligence Service, an intelligence agency trained and skilled in the art of intelligence gathering and equipped with modern [if not state-of-the-art] intelligence gathering devices, has such poor video and sound equipment that it has 'lost' parts of an interview with our client is so surprising that it is almost too difficult to believe."

SIS head Richard Woods would not comment.