The transfer follows widespread publicity about Zaoui’s case and growing calls for his release. A 180-strong protest meeting in his defense was held in Auckland September 17. Supporters mounted a 24-hour vigil outside the prison October 24.

Although the Refugee Status Appeals Authority, a government body, granted Zaoui asylum in August, he continues to be imprisoned under a Security Risk Certificate. This is the first use of such a document, created by 1999 legislation that increased the powers of the immigration police. The certificates allow the detention and deportation of immigrants based on secret evidence. Government officials claim that Zaoui poses a possible “threat to national security.”

Zaoui was elected to Algeria’s parliament in 1991 as a member of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) until the Algerian military staged a coup and his party was outlawed. Officials in New Zealand have attempted to link him to the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), a split-off from the armed wing of the FIS that they brand “terrorist.”

Detained in December 2002, Zaoui was placed in solitary confinement on the basis of a “threat assessment” by the police. It was subsequently revealed that the cops used the website of Lyndon LaRouche, an ultrarightist based in the United States, as one of the key sources for this assessment.

Government ministers have refused to back up their accusations against him, citing the “classified” nature of the evidence. “I have been put in a terrible position because I can’t actually respond to all of the allegations [of unjust imprisonment],” said immigration minister Lianne Dalziel, quoted in the November 2 New Zealand Herald. “If we as a country do not treat classified security information confidentially we simply won’t receive it.”

Several months ago the government ordered the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, retired judge Laurie Greig, to review the materials in the Security Risk Certificate before making a decision on whether to deport Zaoui or release him.

The Herald reported that “Greig has said he will not take human rights into consideration in his review,” and will also not reveal the secret allegations made against Zaoui by the Security Intelligence Service.

Zaoui’s lawyers are challenging these rulings in the High Court. Turning reality on its head, Dalziel blamed their legal challenges for Zaoui’s continued imprisonment.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party government of Prime Minister Helen Clark has taken other demonstrative steps against workers’ rights in its own “war on terrorism.”

With the opposition of only the Green Party, parliament passed the Counter Terrorism Act October 22. The legislation creates new criminal offenses and gives police greater official powers, including the go-ahead to use tracking devices more broadly. Police officers with a search warrant can now require people to provide access to their computers, including their personal passwords. Materials collected under a warrant issued for one offense can, for the first time, be used in court as evidence for a different charge.

Justice minister Philip Goff admitted these measures were not just intended for “terrorist” activities but for broader use. “The sorts of things the terrorists do and the powers needed to track down terrorists are the same powers needed to deal with other forms of serious criminal activity,” he said, according to an October 22 New Zealand Press Association report.

On November 7, Porirua school teacher Paul Hopkinson was convicted on a charge of desecrating the New Zealand flag following a protest in March against the war on Iraq at which a flag was burned. Hopkinson was charged under a little-known 1981 law and is the first person to be convicted here of such an offense.

Clark made an official visit to the Middle East beginning late October. The prime minister visited New Zealand troops in Afghanistan and an engineering unit of the New Zealand Army in Iraq, which serves under the command of British officers. Clark dressed in army fatigues for her speech to the troops. In a media statement, she saluted the soldiers’ work in the “high-threat Basra environment.”

One month earlier the prime minister had farewelled the 61-strong force at the Ohakea airbase, near the town of Bulls in the North Island. She emphasized that they would be involved in “reconstruction-humanitarian work,” in contrast to the “law and order stabilization work” undertaken by U.S. troops. According to the Herald, she also noted that they would be “armed, and permitted to defend themselves.”  
 
 
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