Inmate recalls agent bitter at nosy Kiwis

Alain Mafart's Rainbow Warrior revelations have revived prison memories of the French agent as a down-to-earth, guitar-playing inmate who knew early on that he would not be kept in jail for long.

Former Paremoremo Prison inmate Ross Appelgren shared a cell block with Mafart in 1985 after the French secret agent was given a 10-year term for manslaughter over the sinking of the Greenpeace ship.

Mr Appelgren was then starting a life sentence for murder, a count he is still fighting to get a pardon for.

He said Mafart's claim, in his just released biography, that New Zealand was a nation of police informants had been reinforced by remarks in prison.

The agent once rued the mistake of treating New Zealanders like Europeans who tended to mind their own business instead of ringing police over "every little suspicious thing."

Mafart had laughed after hearing then Prime Minister David Lange's say that he and fellow convicted agent Dominique Prieur were "not for sale." Under a deal, Mafart was out of prison after eight months to be detained for three years on Hao atoll in the Pacific, but was soon back in France.
- Warren Gamble