Some 150 people marched to the Auckland Central Remand Prison August 7 in support of Zaoui’s fight for freedom. The march followed a meeting and concert where students at Auckland University who have formed a defense committee spoke about the facts of the case.

The Refugee Status Appeals Authority (RSAA), a government agency, granted Zaoui asylum in August 2003, but he remains 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 Zaoui poses a possible “threat to national security.”

A decision on whether he will be deported or released is awaiting the outcome of a review of the certificate.

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.”

The government is publicly attempting to undermine the decision of the RSAA. In its report, the authority had declared that convictions in French and Belgian courts that Zaoui had on his record for “criminal association” were “unsafe.”

Prime Minister Helen Clark said in a radio interview, “Those convictions would in the normal course of events never see him get permanent residence in New Zealand. But the complication is that the Refugee Status Appeals Authority chose for its own reasons to simply dismiss out of hand the French and Belgian convictions.”

The government is also appealing a court decision that the inspector general of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), the secret police, must take Zaoui’s human rights into account as part of the review of the Security Risk Certificate. The government’s case against Zaoui suffered a blow when former SIS inspector general Laurie Grieg resigned after making comments against Zaoui and immigrants in the media. Grieg had said in an interview that if it were up to him, Zaoui would be “outski” on the next plane.

In July, the High Court rejected a bid to transfer Zaoui to a non-“custodial” institution. His lawyers had argued that he should be released to a refugee center or into the care of the Catholic Church because of the length of his imprisonment and his deteriorating mental and physical state. They cited one incident when Zaoui was stripped to his underpants and locked in a cell while a video camera tracked his movements.

The actions in defense of Zaoui came on the same day that the government deported Iranian asylum-seeker Saied Ghanbari, who left behind his wife and three children. Ghanbari had lived in New Zealand for eight years. The latest figures report the government deported 1,205 people last year, an increase of nearly 500 percent over the previous 12 months.  
 
 
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