Prisoner of a legal Catch-22

By CHRIS BARTON

"Send the bastard home," shouts a passing driver to a cluster of Amnesty International demonstrators at the top of Nelson St. It's a common suggestion, with a few unprintable variations.

The gateway to Auckland's Spaghetti Junction is a tangle of motorists and emotions - anger and antagonism threaded with lonely cries of "freedom" and "fair trial". All this over an Algerian Muslim who came here on a false passport seeking asylum.

"Man imprisoned without trial for two years". It's the sort of headline you might expect in countries run by oppressive regimes. But surely not in New Zealand?

Perhaps even more surprising is that Helen Clark's Labour Government made it so. Next month, Ahmed Zaoui will have been locked up without trial for two years. His prospects for release look bleak.

"This is a man sitting in prison and there is no horizon," Zaoui's lawyer, Deborah Manning, tells an audience gathered to hear a Zaoui lecture - Clash of Civilisations - delivered in absentia at Auckland University in mid October. "Mr Zaoui's case is a story about the fragility of our democracy."

Her argument hinges on human rights: that Zaoui's imprisonment is patently undemocratic.

Our Security Intelligence Service (SIS) won't say why it issued a security risk certificate on Zaoui in March last year and locked him up - it's classified.

But Zaoui's Catch-22 predicament has fomented all kinds of reactions and explanations - a seething mix of fact with fiction, conspiracy theory, speculation and grains of truth. Here are some of them:

1. There is a terrorist in our midst. To go with this one, you have to believe an al Qaeda cell is about to set up shop in Auckland. It was sparked in December 2002 when news of Zaoui's arrival here was leaked to the Herald - a leak contravening the Immigration Act, which prohibits publicising information about refugee claims.

In a post-September 11 climate, the terrorist story had, as they say, legs. Media organisations including the Herald pursued it vigorously. It's now clear that many of the earlier stories got it hopelessly wrong - a consequence of using unsubstantiated internet-based reports.

But there is information out there. And even with checking, the information could, and did, lead many to believe that Zaoui was "a terrorist on the run". That his name was "linked to terrorist cells that have carried out bombings, beheadings and throat-slitting from Algeria to France". (See 2.) And, if you believe everything you read, that Zaoui had links with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda networks in Asia.

But in September, Acting Police Commissioner Steve Long made an embarrassing u-turn: "New Zealand Police have no specific intelligence which links the Islamic Salvation Front [the Front Islamique du Salut, or FIS, the Algerian political party to which Zaoui belongs] with al Qaeda although some secondary sources claim this.

"Exception has been taken to the way police linked the FIS to terrorist organisations. We withdraw and apologise for any incorrect inferences drawn." (See 4).

2. The French are the real villains. Remember the Rainbow Warrior? Here, one needs to accept that Ahmed Zaoui is the subject of an orchestrated disinformation campaign that can be traced back to the Algerian Government operating as a pawn of the French.

Far-fetched? Not entirely. Evidence heard by our Refugee Status Appeals Authority claims France supported the 1992 coup which stopped the FIS party being democratically elected, because "an Islamic state would be a catastrophe for Algeria and for French interests in Algeria". It would also precipitate an exodus of Algerians to France and destabilise neighbouring Arab states.

The coup outlawed the FIS and Zaoui was sentenced to death in absentia by an Algerian court. He fled to Europe in August 1993 and sought refugee status in Belgium where, as a member of the FIS, he remained politically active. The despotic generals in Algeria, goes this scenario, were not pleased. Zaoui was mobilising sympathisers and generating international awareness of the appalling atrocities in Algeria.

Something had to be done. Infighting among exiled FIS leaders gave Algerian intelligence the opportunity they needed - to label Zaoui a member of the Groupe Islamique Arme (the GIA), notorious for its radical ideology and campaign of assassinations and terror in Algeria.

Zaoui has consistently denied the link and, as our Refugee Status Appeals Authority points out, it's highly dubious because the GIA has also condemned Zaoui to death. But somehow the mud stuck - in Belgium, France, Switzerland and all the way to New Zealand.

In this theory, however, the GIA, as well as being a group of militant, Islamic fundamentalists, has also been infiltrated by the Algerian military and is manipulated for counter-intelligence at the behest of France. Their mission: wipe out the FIS and demonise the Islamists.

An X Files conspiracy? Former Algerian leaders and books by former Algerian military officers, including Mohammad Samraoui's A Chronicle of the Years of Blood: How the Secret Services Manipulated Islamic Groups, give weight to the claim.

A French Canal Plus documentary in 2002 also explores the complicity - specifically the kidnapping by the GIA of three French public servants in Algeria in 1993. The documentary claims it was a fake kidnapping and rescue staged by the security services to make the military regime look good, and to inflame French public opinion against the Islamists.

The French connection is significant for New Zealand because it's highly likely the French Security Service gave our SIS the so-called "classified" evidence against Zaoui. Some also see something sinister in the fact that SIS director Richard Woods was New Zealand Ambassador to France from 1995 to 1999, at the height of the conflict between France's client military regime in Algiers and the Islamic opposition forces. Sacre Bleu!

3. It's all about oil. This is really an extension of the French villains theory - except that American oil interests are being served. In this scenario, the democratic elections in Algeria were aborted not because of the "Islamist threat" but because the FIS, which was on course for a landslide victory, was going to take back the country's resources and "distribute the national wealth to all its citizens".

The primacy of trade over human rights is advanced by Selwyn Manning in I Almost Forgot The Moon: The Disinformation Campaign Against Ahmed Zaoui.

Manning outlines how our own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade sent a diplomatic mission to Algiers in June to expand trade with the military regime and to determine whether it would be safe to deport Zaoui back to his homeland.

Earlier in the book he also discusses how the ministry solicited information from France, Belgium and Switzerland to counteract the Refugee Status Appeals Authority's detailed investigation which found, in August last year, that Zaoui was a legitimate refugee.

The spectre of American meddling is also raised in TVNZ's documentary Enemy of the State, where Algerian political expert Professor George Joffe suspects that our Government's stance on Zaoui may be influenced by pressure from the US. So Uncle Sam is making life difficult because we didn't join the invasion of Iraq.

4. It's a monumental cockup. This one is not too difficult to believe. Let's count the ways government officials and the SIS have bungled.

Cack-handed bureaucrats, Keystone cops, Kafkaesque farce ... It begins with Zaoui's first interview by an inexperienced Customs officer in December 2002. Asked whether he was a member of GIA, Zaoui replied "FIS" and then spelled it out "efeeyes". The over-eager Customs officer misinterpreted that to be "Yes" and rushed off to tell his bosses.

In a flash, word of Zaoui's "admission" - that he belonged to the bloodthirsty GIA terror group - was relayed to our counter-terrorist unit, the SIS, the New Zealand Police, and 12 foreign Interpol offices.

Then there was the fiasco of the Immigration Department senior official denying any knowledge of Zaoui while his colleagues were simultaneously owning up to it. And his subsequent memo: "I was let down badly ... Everyone had agreed to lie in unison, but all the others caved in and I was the only one left singing the original song." Not to mention lying to the Ombudsman about the memo's existence.

It's also clear some of the SIS's threat assessment on Zaoui was based on dubious sources. The police are guilty of the same - relying on the cult website of an American conspiracy theorist and a convicted fraudster to link Zaoui with the terrorist GIA.

To top it all off, Intelligence and Security Inspector-General Laurie Greig, charged with determining the validity of the security risk certificate issued against Zaoui, had to resign.

That was because, in March, our High Court found Greig showed apparent bias - due in part to an interview he gave to Listener journalist Gordon Campbell saying: "We don't want lots of people coming in on false passports that they've thrown down the loo on the plane and saying, 'I'm a refugee, keep me here'." Later, describing how the final decision on a refugee's fate would be up to the Minister of Immigration, Greig said : "I'd be making my decision and it would be outski on the next plane." Ooops.

5. If we let him in, the floodgates will open for more of them. This theory develops from SIS Director Richard Woods' summary of allegations against Zaoui. He argues if Zaoui were allowed to settle here, New Zealand would be seen as a soft touch - hurting our reputation with "other like-minded countries" and our "international wellbeing".

"His presence here would attract, both directly [people who wish to work with him] and indirectly [people encouraged to believe that New Zealand is a safe haven for people with his sort of record], other people likely to engage in activities of security concern."

The somewhat xenophobic stance, coupled with a hardening of attitudes towards Islam, is a position which Joffe says is being adopted by governments worldwide.

Ever since September 11, "governments expect the worse," he said on Enemy of the State. Indiscriminate anti-Islam prejudice may also explain why Zaoui was allegedly brutalised by prison guards during his first two months' imprisonment here.

6. There is no way out. In this scenario Zaoui remains locked up forever - trapped in a Catch-22 nightmare.

We can't send him home because he's been judged a legitimate refugee. To send him back to Algeria, and possible death, would be in breach of our obligations under various refugee conventions we've signed.

Our High Court says Zaoui's human rights must be considered when our new inspector-general reviews Zaoui's security risk certificate. But our Government argues human rights - like the right to a fair trial and to not be unlawfully imprisoned - don't apply when security is at risk. What's more, under the NZSIS Act, the Government needn't say why Zaoui is a risk.

If the certificate is upheld, Zaoui should be deported. But as both a security risk and a refugee with nowhere to go, he can only remain where he is.


Herald Feature: Ahmed Zaoui, parliamentarian in prison

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