So on Wednesday last, Fairfax Media’s Dominion Post printed key chunks of the evidence that had prompted police raids and seventeen arrests under our anti-terrorism laws. (There’s a whole big argument about whether they were right to do so, but I’m going to keep my hand out of that wasp-jar for today at least.)
Russell Brown links to everything and hosts good chatter here.
When I read through these excerpts, I found myself thinking: Is this it? This is all they had? Some of the talk is, frankly, sickening, but to have a year’s surveillance of a “terrorist cell” only come up with a half-dozen sentences that really were obnoxious? And at least half of them were obviously spoken by the shamelessly barmy Jamie Lockett. That’s *it*? (John Campbell helpfully dropped information the DomPost hadn’t seen fit to include, namely that only five or so of the seventeen arrested were quoted in these excerpts.)
Okay, to be fair that’s not it – there was rifle firing, there was a ‘staged hijack’, there were gun-to-the-head loyalty tests, and other bits of theatre. But still. If there was something going on, surely they’d have it on tape. If they were bold enough to pull the pin and swoop on these terrorists, surely they’d have something major.
But they didn’t. A number of bloggers (friends among them) and many letter-to-the-editor correspondents think they did, but I just do not see it.
Instead, here’s what I think was actually going on. Bear in mind this relies on no special knowledge or insider goss – this is all based on the public record. This is my best guess right now as to the true story of New Zealand’s terror cell.
You will recall that my main confusion, right from the start, is that peace campaigners are allegedly caught up in plans for violent action. Either the peace campaigners led a very successful double life, or the police had it very wrong.
Here’s my theory, then. It’s just my theory.
The arrestees all attended Ruatoki camps. The camps were designed as a place for a variety of activists to meet, talk about what they have in common, discuss and practice civil disobedience, etc. By their nature, these camps would have to be secret, far from the public eye and operating only with trusted souls, leaders within their respective communities who were unlikely to be spies.
Similar gatherings have taken place all over the world, on greater or smaller scales. At the G8 protest in Gleneagles, a massive variety of groups were represented, from Church-based social justice groups to spooky Black Bloc anarchists from the continent. There was a lot of interaction among the groups, with common threads being found and ideas being shared. This did not amount to an endorsement of each others’ ideologies or approaches – far from it. One No, but many Yeses, as the saying goes.
So you have a secret group of the police usual suspects having secret meetings in their remote location. Moreover, it’s a location in deepest Tuhoe country, where lots of Tuhoe carry guns as a matter of course, and perhaps where young Tuhoe men train to be security guards for private firms in Iraq. I can see this causing legitimate concern among the police.
On investigation, bugging the group and following them, they find weapons training, They find Jamie Lockett and a few other big mouths talking about shooting people, about assassinating the next prime minister, about taking the struggle into violence, about how to make napalm. I can see why that would cause concern as well.
But wait. This isn’t evidence of a secret terrorist cell. This is (and I remind you this is my personal best guess theory, not anything proven) just a small subset of a group of activists who are talking big and playing Zapatista in the bush, and who, maybe, one day, might do something big.
And all the other activists are not part of this. At worst, they tacitly condone this vicious talk by hearing it and saying nothing about it. More likely, they disapprove and indicate this disapproval without actually confronting the big-talkers or forcing a scene. One No, many Yeses can only work if there is a willingness to let people talk about stuff you find obnoxious, after all.
The police don’t perceive this distinction because they’re expecting to find terrorists. Because everything they hear they take seriously. And the secrecy, the sneaking around, the codenames and hidden meetings in the bush, that all implies a conspiracy, and if they’re all in on the conspiracy, they’re all part of it… and so on.
That’s my theory. It is just a theory, but it’s the best way I’ve found to fit together everything that I know has happened into a picture that makes sense to me.
So… should the police have made their raids? No. After a year, if that’s all they had, they didn’t have a case and despite what the Solicitor General said about their diligence and the failings of the act, they should have known it. They didn’t have a case because there just wasn’t much there to be found. Now, if they’d maintained their surveillance for another year, perhaps the talk would have got more serious, perhaps the preparations would have become more intense. Long before any civilian would be threatened there would be ample proof that something was going badly astray up in the hills. Of course, that surveillance would cost many millions more to carry out. Would it be worth gambling the money on it? Not as far as I’m concerned.
8 thoughts on “Terror Raid Evidence Leaked”
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Let’s just take a step back here first.
The police did not go in expecting a terrorist cell. They went in because after a year something happened that caused them to feel that they needed to search the site and arrest these guys.
While we have a dozen or so quotes that does not mean that is all there is.
Secondly, from an evidential point of view – there is clearly a history of these guys. Looking over the timeline provided, it was a threatening action that got the police investigating in the first place. What they found wasn’t just dialogue but regular and consistent evidence of weapons use over the course of a year.
Again, I don’t believe they were a terrorist cell, but I sure as hell don’t believe it was anything innocent like a meeting of activists to talk about politics and the environment.
I don’t know what was truly happening up there – as we have only seen a small part of a 152-page document. By all reports there is enough material in there to justify cause. The Dom Post, naturally, published select controversial quotes. But they backed these up with a timeline of police activity and a general view of the activities they observed.
They found enough to justify arrest – and it needs to be stressed that these people are still on trial for their initial charges. The law requires the police to take the terrorist style boasting seriously – hence the applying for the terrorist suppression act. They did that because it is required of them as the police.
It was the SG who informed them that they would likely have to test it based on what they were reporting. When he then looked over the evidence, he pointed out that there wasn’t enough to convict. But he has said that there was clearly something disturbing going on.
Sorry, Morgue, but the response I have been seeing from activists now is sounding remarkably apologist, trying to find justification for a growing case against these guys. It may have only been 5 of them, but the others have unfortunately found themselves caught up in the case.
I’m curious to see how the illegal firearms issue plays out… maybe then we will see a bit more of what has been going on.
And as a side note – a cache of illegal firearms, observed use of those weapons, molotov cocktails and an IRA training manual don’t – to the best of my memory – count as lack of evidence.
Based on the timeline of surveillance, the police already knew the weapons and molotovs were there – they needed to find out if there was more than they had observed.
Don’t get caught up in the myth that there was just heated words. Those were merely what caused the terrorist charges. When taken in context with the observed activity, it was more than enough to justify action.
I find it interesting that those on the “it’s against the activists” side of this debate continually overlook the fact that these folk were observed training with illegal weapons of a military nature and that said weapons were found during the raids. Amazing how they disappear and it becomes all about some bugged conversations.
Heh
Having read over a recent herald article though it seems that the claims are that the “cache” is only four weapons and 200 rounds of ammo.
If that is the case, I’ll definitely be curious to see how well the illegal arms charges stick. 🙂
As I said before, there may be a few more twists in this case yet…
“…continually overlook the fact that these folk were observed training with illegal weapons of a military nature…”
Just to answer this specific point – this is precisely the focus of this entire post and theory. I find it hard to imagine the peace activists arrested training with illegal weapons. It seems to me such an outlandish claim. The story I propose above is an attempt to make sense of this.
Hopefully more later. 🙂
My best guess is pretty similar to Morgue’s.
Conan, I agree that what was happening was not nothing and that some sort of intervention had to happen.
However, wrt the activists, don’t forget that we don’t know who was training with what when. All the information we have about things that took place is missing the names of who took part and so on.
So when we hear things like “they had an IRA training manual” that may actually mean “one person had it in their backpack.” And so on.
An IRA training manual will get you into Government on this side of the globe.
I find it disturbing that the police are beginning to see what they want to see in a lot of these cases. If they have evidence that one of them is going too far then they should arrest that individual, but what we get is an effort to construct some conspiracy or world-wide network of terror, where there is none.
Well to be fair, it was the media who decried terrorists. The police merely followed procedure. That’s my biggest issue – the police did not out and out declare a conspiracy. They said that there was enough evidence to raise concern of activities occuring and that they needed to act.
The evidence provided suggests that this was a reasonable course of action. They followed procedure as is required when dealing with certain threats. But I suspect that they didn’t really feel that it was a terrorist cell, but rather a dangerous bunch of people that they couldn’t risk ignoring in case it ended up being for real.
Whether they are terrorists or not is up to the courts to decide, and I think it is fairly clear now that there wasn’t a global conspiracy – but then the only people who saw that were those inflating what the media were sensationally reporting.
Morgue’s theory makes sense to me, but we are only looking at a very small sample of the evidence.
A workmate’s reaction to the news of the molotov cocktails was to tell us about her ex-partner throwing one at the front entrance of the Lower Hutt Police Station when he was 18.