Ahmed Zaoui
December 10th, 2003 at 7:20 am by David FarrarA meeting was held in Wellington last night to support convicted terrorist and refugee status seeker Ahmed Zaoui. I resisted the urge to pop in on the way home after seeing the new Don Brash puppet get unveiled at the Backbencher.
Comparing Zaoui’s situation to Zimbabwe is stupid and insulting but that is what one expects of Gregory Fortuin. Whether one likes it or not Zaoui has been convicted of terrorist crimes in two fellow OECD countries – Belgium and France. Now those convictions may be shonky, but at the very least they require us to be very very cautious.
The Government’s handling of this issue has been appalling, and not at all helped by the SIS losing tapes, but that doesn’t mean their decisions have been wrong. In fact former Opposition Leader Bill English who used to sit on Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee took the unusual step of saying he thought the Government has made the right decisions with regards to Zaoui. There was no benefit to him in going out of the way to say this, so people may want to reflect that there is more to this issue than the media reports.
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December 23rd, 2003 at 9:51 pm
No one is suggesting that Ahmed Zaoui should have been let in to NZ without checking into his background.
A thorough check was done, in the form of the Refugee Status Appeal Authority decision which was released in August 2003. You can read the report at:
http://www.humanrights.co.nz/documents/RSAAdecision_001.pdf
The RSAA rejects over 80% of the appeals it hears (http://www.refugee.org.nz/stats.htm), but in this case, they have found Mr. Zaoui to be genuine refugee and described him as:
“an articulate, intelligent, committed and principled individual, who, despite the hurdles placed before him over the last ten years remains a passionate advocate for peace through democracy in Algeria”
If the SIS have something solid on Mr. Zaoui (although it seems increasingly unlikely), then it must be tested in court. It is simply not good enough to claim they have something that could mean Ahmed Zaoui is a threat to national security without anything other than an internal review.
As I understand it, Bill English would have been given an oral briefing. Dr. Paul Buchanan (an expert in intelligence) said of Bill English’s comments: “I doubt that Mr. English has seen the whole picture, but instead has been provided scary summaries of possible terrorist links by Mr. Zaoui–and they could well be bogus.”
My own opinion is that if there is solid information against Mr. Zaoui, then it must be tested fairly in court, and if they don’t have anything, than the comprehensive decision of the RSAA should be relied on, and Ahmed Zaoui freed into NZ.
Vote:December 10th, 2004 at 11:30 am
The simple fact is that he arrived on a false passport and has been convicted of terrorist crimes in France. It is not right to lock him up without a trial but A man like this does not belong in New Zealand.
Vote:December 10th, 2004 at 11:44 am
Mike: would not hurt for you to read the RSAA report which deals with these issues in detail – passport issue found to be normal for refugees and hence not a reason to deny him refuge and the French conviction assessed unsound.
Vote: