October 15th Solidarity

There were a number of minor victories during the 5 March appearance in Auckland District Court, and some further clarification about the Crown case against the now 19 accused.

First, a number of the accused applied for variations of their bail conditions. These variations included the elimination of oppressive curfews, reduction in the number of times a week they have to report to the police station, and dropping of the non-association orders that exist between most of the accused (except in particular circumstances relating to work). Most of these applications were successful; however, the Crown is very keen to continue to punish many of the defendants by refusing to consent to dropping all of the non-association orders, despite little in the way of evidence to support them. In the small town of Ruatoki, it requires a major logistical operation for some of the defendants to even go to the local grocery store as a result of these orders. Moreover, the reporting condition is a significant financial hardship for several defendants who have to travel to the police station in Whakatane, a round-trip costing about $40. Tame Iti will be applying to have his passport returned in order that he can do some work in Japan over the next month. Others may follow suit with other variations in the next few weeks. Overall, we will continue to ‘chip away’ at the conditions, with the aim of having them all removed by the time of depositions hearing.

Second, the deposition hearing has now been set for the entire month of September in Auckland. During this hearing, the Crown will need to prove that there is a ‘prima facia’ case, e.g. literally the expression means ‘on the face of it’: so in other words, the police usually have to prove that there is some evidence, and the threshold is quite low for this.

Third, several other orders were made in the court with important implications for the case. First, Annette Sykes requested that all intercepted conversations in Te Reo Maori be properly translated into English in order that all of the lawyers and defendants can have access to them. As part of this request, the Crown noted that no intercepted conversations would be used in evidence. As all of this material was obtained under Terrorism Suppression Act warrants, it is inadmissible in these proceedings. Secondly, the Court ordered that the Crown have all ‘briefs of evidence’ signed and ready by 5 July. Evidence in the Criminal Court is presented by way of Briefs of Evidence by the prosecution but when the witnesses actually come to give evidence they cannot read out their Brief of Evidence but must answer individual questions from the Crown Solicitor.

The defendants have been excused from the next ‘call-over’ on 18 April when several further applications will be lodged by counsel for the defence. The next scheduled appearance for defendants will be 1 September, pending any interim decision from the Auckland district court.