Naive Zaoui supporters ignoring evidence, says National

By KEVIN TAYLOR

The National Party has slammed supporters of detained Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui for continuing to ignore "damning evidence" from overseas courts about him.

Mr Zaoui's defenders are naive to dismiss decisions made by senior courts in Belgium and France, National's immigration spokesman, Wayne Mapp, said yesterday.

He said the European courts had made damning findings against Mr Zaoui, contrary to the NZ Refugee Status Appeals Authority's findings last year which gave him refugee status.

"Zaoui is clearly not the innocent refugee he claims and should not be allowed into New Zealand," Dr Mapp said. "If he doesn't like our prison system all he needs to do is choose to leave."

The Weekend Herald reported that European intelligence sources and security experts believed Mr Zaoui provided Algerian terrorists in Europe with financial or logistical support in the 1990s, but played no active role in any violence.

Nearly all the current and former senior officials in Belgian and French intelligence and counter-terrorist agencies who were interviewed - and who shaped their Governments' actions against Mr Zaoui - said he was an ambiguous, even Machiavellian figure.

Mr Zaoui only ever faced criminal-association and false-passport charges in France and Belgium, never direct terrorism charges.

Dr Mapp said Mr Zaoui's advocates and the Refugee Status Appeals Authority - a "junior judicial body" - should not dismiss the findings of senior courts.

He cited comments from the Belgium Court of Appeal: "The sentence on Zaoui must take account of the importance of the role played by him at the head of the association of criminals and its activities ...

"Zaoui's life and activities ... appear to be surrounded by an unacceptably clandestine atmosphere which is incompatible with the official activities of FIS [the Islamic Salvation Front]."

Dr Mapp said those comments should be added to Mr Zaoui's "clear criminal activity" in Belgium, France and New Zealand through his repeated use of forged documents.

"These are lightly dismissed by the [Refugee Status Appeals Authority] as the legitimate act of a refugee, but Zaoui has had a pattern of activity in a number of countries and all concluded he was a security risk."

Green MP Keith Locke, a supporter of Mr Zaoui, said any court system had to look at the information provided and see if it stood up.

"The Refugee Status Appeals Authority went through point by point and showed that the court processes in this case were very sadly lacking.

"It doesn't flow from that ... that the French and Belgium court system is bad.

"But what I think is relevant is that around the world today we find a certain pressure on court processes in terrorism cases to perhaps give higher credibility to the aspersions of intelligence agencies than is warranted by the factual situation."

Mr Locke said the Weekend Herald information was not new.

The newspaper learned that investigators in Belgium, France and Switzerland all separately arrived at the conclusion that Mr Zaoui was not a direct security threat.

On the other hand, he was suspected of being a bridge between the non-violent FIS and the Algerian terrorist group GIA and possibly giving support to terrorists in the form of money or false documents.

In 2001, France's top anti-terrorism examining magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, said the organisation led by Mr Zaoui was "aimed at directly supporting the commando instructed by [GIA leader] Djamel Zitouni to commit bombings in France in 1995".

Herald Feature: Ahmed Zaoui, parliamentarian in prison

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