Man linked to Rainbow Warrior sinking gets away scot free

Bombs placed on the Rainbow Warrior's hull sank the Greenpeace flagship in the Waitemata Harbour in July 1985.

PARIS - The Government will not seek extradition of the man believed to have planted the limpet mines that sank the Rainbow Warrior.

Prime Minister Helen Clark's office said yesterday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade had advised that in 1991 then Attorney-General Paul East stayed "all outstanding charges", in the country's national interest.

"This followed a Cabinet decision to not seek extradition of an agent with alleged involvement who had been arrested in Switzerland. The Government of the day accepted that the Rainbow Warrior bombing was resolved," the Prime Minister's office said.

The decision comes after weekend revelations that Frenchman Gerard Royal - the brother of France's likely next President, Segolene Royal - was a prime suspect in the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace ship in Auckland.

Greenpeace executive director Bunny McDiarmid - a Rainbow Warrior crew member the day it was bombed - said it was not worthwhile pursuing extradition. She believed there was little hope the French secret agents who carried out the bombing would be brought to justice.

She said whoever did the bombing was getting away with murder.

"It seems that there are two types of terrorists these days; the state terrorists being the ones who get away with it.

"Next year is the 20th anniversary of our nuclear-free legislation.

"The best thing our Government can do is to keep that legislation strong and push for international nuclear disarmament.

"This is the issue Greenpeace was working on then - and still is now."

And New Zealand would face an enormous hurdle in assembling sufficient evidence for extradition, French sources said at the weekend.

Any extradition bid could revive the tensions with France that followed the 1985 bombing.

Segolene Royal's younger brother, Antoine Royal, told the daily le Parisien that Gerard was a member of the sabotage squad that sank the Greenpeace flagship in Auckland.

It is the first public identification of a suspected member of the notorious four-man "third team" which took part in the operation but was able to flee New Zealand, thwarting the dragnet that trapped Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur.

Antoine Royal said: "At the time Gerard was a lieutenant and agent of the DGSE [the French foreign intelligence agency] in Asia. He was asked in 1985 to go to New Zealand ... to sabotage the Rainbow Warrior.

"Later he told me that it was he who planted the bomb on the Greenpeace ship. He took a small craft with a second person to approach the boat. He was able to escape the New Zealand authorities."

The daily Liberation said Gerard Royal's codename in so-called Operation Satanic was "Derrick". Royal left the DGSE many years ago, transferring to the private sector.

The disclosure coincided with the screening of a TVNZ documentary into Mafart and Prieur as they pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

In France, it happened just as Segolene Royal, 53, who is the Socialist Party's frontrunner, formally announced her candidacy for the elections due in seven months.

The party is to vote on its presidential candidates on November 16.

This timing clearly stokes the level of political discomfort both in France and New Zealand.

In Paris, sources say there is no traction to take any moves toward extradition beyond the stage of clamour.

"Legally, nothing's going to happen, because you won't get the material proof of [Gerard] Royal's involvement," said a senior intelligence source.

That point of view was indirectly supported in New Zealand by Jim Anderton, who was a member of the Government's foreign affairs select committee in 1985.

"Evidence is required, not just one family member saying something against another," said Mr Anderton.

And in France, the Rainbow Warrior bombing is viewed distantly, as an ill-starred act of state that happened more than 20 years ago, and not with the same lingering sense of outrage as in New Zealand, where it was the first act of foreign terrorism.

Some French people are angry at their Government's arrogance and the coverup. But it would be fair to say that most have consigned the operation to history, given that France apologised, paid compensation and the President under whom it all happened, Francois Mitterrand, has been in his grave for more than a decade.

Indeed, the intelligence source argues that "a majority [of people] ... probably supported the operation and only regret that we had to say sorry to the New Zealanders about it".

As a result, the political energies that might force a French Government to open an investigation into Gerard Royal, especially if his sister is in the Elysee presidential palace, are quite simply are not there.

"You can create a political scandal about this in New Zealand but not in France," the source observed.

Helen Clark is due to visit France next month, but a French diplomatic source predicted that neither side would be keen to let Rainbow Warrior intrude on bilateral ties that have become surprisingly warm in the past two years, with closer co-operation in the South Pacific and multiplying academic and cultural exchanges.

Admiral Pierre Lacoste, who was head of the DGSE at the time and ordered the Rainbow Warrior operation, told the Herald that he could not comment on the report in the Parisien.

The French Foreign Ministry also declined to respond.

- Additional reporting Herald staff