Editorial: Public needs convincing of Zaoui risk

Retired judge Laurie Greig, the Inspector-General of the Security Intelligence Service, has reason to regret giving an interview published in the Listener this week.

In it he makes a remark that sounds hypothetical, although some readers have concluded from it that he has already decided the SIS is justified in declaring the Algerian political refugee Ahmed Zaoui a security risk. Justice Greig was pointing out that the Minister of Immigration will have three days to decide whether to act on his decision when she gets it. "If that wasn't the case then she wouldn't have a decision," he said. "I'd be making my decision and it would be 'outski' on the next plane."

In fact, Justice Greig made some comments in that interview that are more worrying. He says in response to criticism of the the standards of accuracy expected of the SIS, that "the security services rely a great deal on hearsay. What is told to them. Do you refuse to listen to hearsay ... do you just ignore it until you've got it corroborated?"

That bit of candour might illuminate the contents of an affidavit supplied by the head of the SIS, Richard Woods, for next week's High Court challenge to the service's secrecy. The affidavit, reported in the Weekend Herald, discloses that information the SIS is determined to keep secret relates only to the period after Mr Zaoui fled Algeria. The grounds upon which the SIS issued a security risk certificate are Mr Zaoui's criminal convictions in Belgium and France, refusals by Belgian tribunals and courts to grant him refugee status and the Swiss decision to expel him.

Whatever view is taken of Mr Zaoui's case for asylum, we must hope that New Zealand's security intelligence is better than hearsay. The SIS must not simply take its cue from other Western agencies whose Governments have their own diplomatic or strategic reasons for maintaining good relations with the Algerian regime. Even if France and its neighbours, Belgium and Switzerland, have well-founded concerns that Mr Zaoui represents a security risk on their soil, they might not apply in New Zealand. This is a long way from Algeria - not a good staging post, you would assume, for Mr Zaoui's Islamic party to plot the ouster of the military regime that deposed his Government.

That is not to presume - as too many people have done - that Mr Zaoui would be a thoroughly harmless refugee here. We simply do not know. Until we know, either way, all we can do is urge the SIS and its overseer, Justice Greig, to make a truly independent decision - and not use security to hide information that would not stand scrutiny in the light of day.

If the SIS has gone about its job properly, corroborating for itself all information passed to it by foreign agencies, it will be in a better position to provide the public with a convincing case. If, however, it has uncritically accepted the intelligence of those other agencies, it will be unable to disclose anything without identifying the source. The more Mr Woods insists that to reveal any information would compromise its suppliers, the more people will suspect that SIS advice to the Government is based on nothing but hearsay.

The briefings the SIS have given to leaders of both sides of Parliament appear to have convinced them there are serious grounds for concern. But it is all too possible that leaders of both sides are content to take the word of the service, which in turn has relied on the word of what it calls its "overseas liaison partners". Mr Woods' affidavit also suggests that he is operating under a wide definition of security risk. It covers not only activities that threaten the safety of any person here but which could "impact adversely on New Zealand's international well-being". If Mr Zaoui has to go, it must be for good reasons based on verifiable facts, the kind that can stand public scrutiny.