October 15th Solidarity - Remember the state terror raids

16th October 2007

For nearly a year, police watched as members of the group at the centre of an unprecedented terrorism investigation trained with military weapons in guerrilla-style camps.

Hidden in the bush deep in the remote Urewera ranges specialist anti-terrorist officers are understood to have observed the group firing live rounds during sessions at the camps, at times just metres from the gun play.

The close surveillance was accompanied by an extensive electronic operation that gathered hundreds of hours of recordings from bugged conversations, tapped cellphone calls and texts and video surveillance, including footage of the training.

Last week, after an investigation that began late last year, police took the first step in an operation in which more than 300 officers – including members of the special tactics group and the armed offenders squad– swooped on homes in several towns and cities in a series of raids around New Zealand.

Seventeen arrests were made in Wellington, Palmerston North, Hamilton, Auckland and the Eastern Bay of Plenty, where the hamlet of Ruatoki, 15km south of Whakatane, was sealed off by armed police.

Those arrested have links with Maori sovereignty, environmental and "peace" groups.

Police Commissioner Howard Broad would not confirm the backgrounds of those caught, though he said those who had trained at the camps – numbering in "the tens" – had different motivations and were from different ethnicities.

It is understood police believe that, although they were training together, each faction of the group was planning to hit targets specific to their own interests in attacks co-ordinated to cause maximum chaos and to stretch police resources across New Zealand.

One source said the group was focused on Maori self-determination causes, with environmental groups caught in the fringes.

The raids were preceded by a Beehive meeting of the top-secret Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Co-ordination (ODESC), which advises Prime Minister Helen Clark on terrorism, security and intelligence threats.

Its members include Broad as well as the heads of the Defence Force and the Security Intelligence Service and Government Communications Security Bureau spy agencies.

At that meeting, Clark was briefed on the investigation to date and told that the police would move against the group yesterday.

She said she was surprised by the "scale and numbers of people involved" in the camps when she was briefed, but stressed it was left to police to decide when to act.

Broad indicated the timing of the raids followed concern at the level reached by members of the group, but would not be drawn on whether there was any specific threat or planned attack.

"There are military-style weapons involved ... It was military-style activities that they were training for.

"There are a range of motivations, sufficient for me to be concerned that I would take the action at this particular point ...

"There was a significant risk, and I deemed it prudent to act now rather than allow this risk to continue.

"In terms of our oversight of what's been going on, we were aware of where the group, or the people in the group, have progressed to, and again I say that we deem it prudent to actually take the action we take today," Broad said.

"I think the issue of concern is the fact that we've got these training camps that have been active in New Zealand.

"That does elevate this to a level of concern about this sort of thing that we have not had in the past, and that obviously is a factor that drives my concern, and therefore the actions that we've taken."

He confirmed the training camps had involved the use of military weapons, but would not comment on reports that police expected to find – or had found – machine-guns and hand grenades during the raids.

However, some of the charges laid yesterday related to the alleged discovery of military-style semi-automatic weapons, other firearms, ammunition and molotov cocktails.

There were also reports that police search warrants included specific references to military items such as laser range finders and that a napalm-style bomb had been tested at one of the camp sites.

Yesterday's raids were unprecedented as they were based on warrants that sought evidence of possible crimes under the Terrorism Suppression Act – the first time the act is believed to have been used by police since it passed in 2002.

Though police have yet to decide whether to lay charges under that act, which requires the permission of the Solicitor-General, Broad confirmed they were proceeding in that direction.

However, he said that was not a foregone conclusion and would depend on the evidence police compiled during the raids and later phases of the investigation.

"I just want to stress that we should all be wary of jumping to conclusions about the extent of involvement of the Terrorism Suppression Act until we've done a full assessment and made a determination whether or not to seek consent to lay any charges under the Act.

"This will take some time, and I can't put a time frame around it at this particular junction."

Inquiries by the Sunday Star-Times have found that more than 60 people from around New Zealand were recorded talking to, and in some cases training with, members of the group arrested yesterday.

It is understood all will be brought in for questioning, though Broad said yesterday that not everyone who had been to the camps would be charged as not all had "necessarily committed an offence".

Former MP Ross Meurant, who used to be inspector in charge of the Auckland police criminal intelligence section in 1987, said subjective assessment by police of information they had gathered was vulnerable to "self-hype" and "self-justification".

He said some of the people arrested yesterday were around in 1987.

"Nothing dramatic has happened during the past 20 years. Based on my experience, I suspect that other than a few illegal firearms charges, nothing more than remote charges of conspiracy will emerge." –Sunday Star-Times and Dominion Post