COURTROOM 8 HOSTS OPERATION 8 HEARINGS



Fittingly, the Operation 8 hearings were scheduled for courtroom 8 in Auckland’s District Court. This was home to the initial pre-bail hearings before the Solicitor General in November 2007 over-ruled the use of the Terrorism Suppression Act against the original Urewera 17, which became 16, which then morphed into 19 and then 20 before falling back to the 18 named in these Auckland proceedings.

To explain: Charges against one of the original 17 were immediately determined unrelated. Subsequently, three others were arrested in February and then one ‘netted’ in April 2008. The trial of one of the three has been shifted to Tauranga.

The Albert Street District Court with its dozen chambers needs attention.
In 2007, the handicapped W.C. door latch malfunctioned. Now that door will not close at all, leaving two stalls for the hundreds of women on that floor.
The water cooler switch mechanism is broken and operable only with a make shift tool. It is the lone water source on the floor.
Similarly, seating was a scarce commodity on the 1 September opening day. Indeed, only 6 seats were available to the whanau and supporters of the 19 defendants.

Many had journeyed from Ruatoki, some from Wellington and at least one from Australia.
Meanwhile, a vacant two-row barricade of seats insured the security of the police seated behind the defendants and across from the six visitors.
Common sense prevailed after the first break when the so-called ‘terrorists’ and the police were seated left of aisle after the offensive security tape was removed, leaving the remaining 24 seats for whanau and supporters.

After day one, the newspaper promotional banner for local vendors read: “Terrorist Trial Torturous.”

Although Tame Iti had successfully petitioned for translation into Te Reo [Maori] in February 2008, the Crown seemed startled that he insisted on having the charges against him read in both languages.
After a second lengthier adjournment, the reading of the charges commenced. As the male Pakeha registrar could not pronounce the names of the defendants, a woman who could was pressed into duty.
By five o’clock, only six of the 18 had heard the charges against them, with Tame Iti last.

On 2 September, the translation issues persisted. Copies of the newly-laid charges had not been prepared for the translators. However, when the new copies arrived after the reading of the old charges, they proved illegible.
Subsequently, one translation document had been mutilated and a second one varied from the judge’s original, i.e; on the original, the weapon was listed as a gun while on the altered copy, a Molotov cocktail was identified.

To explain the old and new charges: Originally, the defendants were charged with possession of a weapon on X date. Thus, if a person attended two bush survival camps, they faced two charges.
The charges have been amended so that if a person attended a camp with 10 others were 10 guns, for example, where available, each now faces 10 charges of possession, one for each of the 10 guns. That is then multiplied by the number of sessions attended.

Thus some defendants face as many as 30 charges. Seven defendants have successfully petitioned for dual Maori-English readings of the charges.
Thus, the process is time consuming and the Crown’s lack of preparation for the dual readings creates tedious, unnecessary delays. They consume considerable time indeed.
In addition to Judge Perkins, there are 2-3 Crown prosecutors, 6-8 police—including Mr. Pascoe, the lead investigator who is omnipresent—15-20 legal representatives for the defendants, two court registrar staff, two translators, 5-10 media representatives in addition to the defendants and their whanau/supporters.
Given the snail’s pace of day# 2, the press may advertise: “Terrifyingly Tedious Trial” proceedings.
3/09/2008 7:52 a.m.