Tracing Ahmed Zaoui's trial in Belgium

6.00pm - By CATHERINE FIELD

Grey, unloved, its buildings and streets reeking of the tedium of eurocracy, Brussels is not known for excitement. But in September 1995, the city was gripped by fever as it hosted Europe's first trial of suspected Islamist terrorists.

Armed police swathed the county court with rings of steel. Grim-faced magistrates and prosecutors, who had received death threats, were hustled into the building escorted by bodyguards.

Scores of reporters and photographers laid siege, hoping for a glimpse of the 13 accused, including Ahmed Zaoui, who - it was speculated - was a kingpin in a terrorist network blamed for atrocities across Algeria as well as bombings on the Paris metro just months before.

Zaoui, a leader of Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), would be acquitted, and then convicted on appeal, of being "the instigator or the head of a criminal organisation" and on two charges of using false passports. He was handed a four-year suspended sentence.

More than eight years later, this historic first trial has ignited a blaze of controversy in New Zealand and caused friction with Belgium and France.

The cause: the 215-page report of the Refugee Status Appeals Authority, which branded Zaoui's trials as unfair and justification for granting the Islamic cleric refugee status.

The authority identified what it describes as a string of procedural flaws, denial of the defendants' rights and evidence whose standards of accuracy and impartiality fell far below that of New Zealand's judicial system.

In Brussels, this criticism has met with an array of emotions, ranging from polite rebuttal and wry smiles to barely disguised dismay.

If, as the authority says, Zaoui was treated unfairly, that is news to one of his defence lawyers at the time, Gilles Vanderbeck.

"I don't think that in the trial Mr Zaoui had, there was an unfair trial. I think he had the chance to defend himself, and defend himself he did," Vanderbeck told the Weekend Herald.

The greatest wrath is reserved for the agency's portrayal of Zaoui as being denied his right to understand what was going on.

The authority claims Zaoui was denied access to an Arabic-speaking interpreter when investigators were interviewing him or speaking to his counsel. In addition, he was given only a partial translation of court proceedings.

This is a clear distortion, say Belgian justice department sources. They say Zaoui's French was fine for basic conversations but not for handling the linguistic complexities of law. But an interpreter was placed at his disposal whenever he requested it.

"He had a translator. We made a point of honour out of it because the rights of the defendant are important," a senior judicial official in Brussels said.

Belgian state officials, who sought to prosecute Zaoui, and the lawyers who defended him agree.

"When it comes to details, to semantics, in a witness hearing, to questions that are being asked, it was quite normal for him to ask for an interpreter and this was never denied him," says Vanderbeck. "He had an interpreter throughout the trial."

If Zaoui now says that his rights were abused by language difficulties, he certainly did not complain at the time, scoffs a senior judicial official in Brussels.

"Under Belgian law, the suspect has the very last right to speak, to come forward with all his concerns, his version of the facts, his remarks.

"So if there had been any miscommunication, misunderstandings, Mr Zaoui had full right and opportunity to do so till the very last stage of the procedure. I do not remember [any] such intervention."

The official snorts: "Naivety can be very charming, but also very harmful."

Their French counterparts, who interviewed or counselled Zaoui several years later for a separate trial in Paris, said Zaoui had good, even perfect French. He had lived for almost all his life in a country where French is an official language, alongside Arabic and Berber, and was a university professor, a member of the intellectual elite for whom French is often the language of choice.

A French investigating magistrate who interviewed Zaoui for more than five hours in Switzerland in 1998 is adamant.

"He [Zaoui] speaks French very well, very very well ... he speaks French perfectly," says Roger Le Loire, who led the French investigation into charges of criminal association against Zaoui. "He didn't ask for the interpreter and he only had to ask for one [to get one]."

Another of the authority's allegations concerns the frenzied media coverage that surrounded Zaoui. Did this prejudice his trial?

Vanderbeck said he initially feared so, but this turned out not to be the case. "I think that he had every opportunity for presenting his defence and his arguments to defend himself."

Amnesty International points out that all defendants in European countries have the right to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Zaoui was certainly aware of this avenue. In 1998, while he was in Switzerland where he had fled from Belgium, he filed suit at Europe's paramount court after the Swiss authorities confiscated his fax and telephone on the grounds that they were being used to disseminate Islamist propaganda.

As for the allegation that the evidence was thin or circumstantial, much of it was rejected by the first trial - and the evidence that was retained by the appeal court was not enough to warrant more than a suspended sentence.

"The decision to acquit Mr Zaoui [in the first trial] could be justified on the grounds that it was hard to put forward incontrovertible evidence that he participated in a terrorist movement," says Vanderbeck.

The Weekend Herald has been refused permission to view the dossier of evidence used in the two Zaoui trials in Belgium, but has obtained various documents and a copy of the verdict of the 14th Chamber of the Court of Appeal in Brussels.

The main evidence against Zaoui retained in the verdict concerns two blank Belgian passports, a Danish identity card and a Danish passport that had been altered to include the name of Zaoui's wife. Zaoui said the Belgian passports were intended for his father and father-in-law to leave Algeria and the Danish passport was for his wife, Leila, to do the same. Investigators also found $4300 at his home.

The verdict also refers to weapons caches found in three separate locations in Brussels, one a garage not far from Zaoui's home, including 20 pistols, 6000 rounds of ammunitions, fragmentation grenades and bomb-making devices. Zaoui confirmed in court he knew one of the co-defendants charged with possessing these weapons, but insisted he knew nothing of the weapons' existence.

If Zaoui's supporters say that he was treated harshly and unfairly in Belgium, those who investigated him in Brussels say he got a fair trial - and, they add, he got off lightly by today's standards.

At the time Belgium had no specific anti-terrorism laws. Zaoui was tried under statutes dating back to the 1800s that punish a specific intent to inflict criminal violence on persons or property.

This law had a statute of limitations: the case had to be brought within six months of arrest. This severely restricted the time for probing a case of suspected terrorism, one of the toughest and most nebulous challenges in the investigative book. Zaoui was arrested on March 1995 and his trial began in September.

One of the 13 defendants, Tunisian-born Tarek Maaroufi, was convicted on the same grounds as Zaoui, of leading or instigating a criminal association, and was given a three-year suspended term. The others were accused of having taken part in this association.

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks Belgium and other European Union countries have overhauled their laws, introducing or broadening the definition of terrorism, extending or abolishing the statute of limitations, widening the terms of admissible evidence and toughening the penalties.

One example of this tougher environment is another case involving false passports.

The defendant was none other than Maaroufi, who was prosecuted in Belgium last year for having provided fake passports to the two Tunisians who assassinated anti-Taleban leader Ahmed Shah Massoud in Afghanistan, two days before the September 11 attacks on the United States.

This time there was no suspended term: Maaroufi was sentenced last year to six years' jail.

"The outcome [in 1995] was very poor," says the senior Belgian justice department source.

"It was a law without any effect because that was all that we had at the time. If we had exactly the same case today, Zaoui would face another scenario."

What the RSAA said

Following is a summary of the main points made by the RSAA of Zaoui's trial and appeal in Belgium. They are the agency's principal argument for granting him refugee status in New Zealand.

* Zaoui, an Arabic speaker with inadequate French, was denied access to an interpreter at key points in the investigation and in talks with his lawyer, and the translation of trial proceedings was incomplete.

* He stood no chance of a fair hearing, given the frenzied pre-trial media coverage - evidence against him was sketchy, circumstantial or hearsay.

* Suggestions that Zaoui used his "moral authority" to inspire terrorism were unfounded. The RSAA concludes: "He was then, and remains, opposed to violence and has instead worked at all times for the peaceful political and constitutional resolution of the Algerian crisis."

Herald Feature: Ahmed Zaoui, parliamentarian in prison

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