Zaoui details lifted from cult website

By CATHERINE MASTERS

The police are under attack for relying on the cult website of a convicted fraudster which links Ahmed Zaoui with a terrorist group.

The Security Intelligence Service has already come under fire for using unsubstantiated internet reports to gather information about the Algerian.

Zaoui has been cleared by the Refugee Status Appeals Authority of terrorist links but has been in solitary confinement in Auckland Prison at Paremoremo for 10 months and is now awaiting the outcome of a review of a Security Risk Certificate issued on the basis of secret SIS information.

He was sent to solitary at the prison after the police's national bureau of criminal intelligence carried out a confidential threat assessment when Zaoui arrived in early December.

The December 11 assessment said there was a political risk that Zaoui would try to gain some support by using the media and ordered that a total media blanket already in place in relation to him should continue.

The assessment also says he was considered to be a senior member of the GIA, a terrorist group originating in Algeria.

It says this group was involved in several violent acts, then refers the reader to the website www.larouchepub.com.

The website is that of American Lyndon LaRouche, a convicted fraudster who has stood for President in elections since 1976.

LaRouche was sent to prison after being convicted in the late 1980s of swindling elderly people for campaign money, and tax evasion.

Time magazine reports he has accused Queen Elizabeth II of drug trafficking and blamed the International Monetary Fund for creating and spreading the Aids virus.

One of Zaoui's lawyers, Deborah Manning, said people were welcome to visit the website and make up their own minds about its credibility.

"The threat assessment from the New Zealand Police has about as much credibility as the SIS information which was strongly criticised by the RSAA in its decision," she said.

The police say the assessment was given to the Department of Corrections as it had responsibility for Zaoui's custody on immigration-related matters following a court appearance.

Given that his Security Risk Certificate was being reviewed, police said they could not comment further.

Ced Simpson, Amnesty International's New Zealand executive director, said basing information on a website like LaRouche's was hardly reliable.

"If that's where the police derive information about threats to security, then that's very disturbing."

He was also concerned that police appeared to have tried to obstruct an asylum seeker's right to gain whatever support he could.

Green MP Keith Locke said he was astounded the only source referred to was the LaRouche website, which promoted a "weird world conspiracy cult" linking US political figures to radical terrorists.