Rainbow Warrior trial footage to be screened in NZ
Two French agents briefly jailed in New Zealand for bombing the protest ship Rainbow Warrior cannot challenge a New Zealand court decision allowing the broadcast of video footage of their 1985 trial, the Court of Appeal ruled today in Wellington.
A High Court ruling in May gave state network Television New Zealand the right to broadcast footage of the two-week trial.
The agents of France’s DGSE spy agency, Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, pleaded guilty to the July 1985 bombing and were sentenced to 10 years in prison for the death of a Dutch Greenpeace photographer in the incident.
The Greenpeace ship was in New Zealand being readied for a protest at sea against French nuclear bomb tests at its South Pacific test site of Muroroa when two blasts from limpet mines ripped open its hull.
The pair’s trial for their part in the attack on the vessel was relayed by video link to media in a room next to the court. The tape has never been seen by the public.
The network’s website said the tapes were a “public record of an important event in New Zealand history”.
The two agents were deported after serving less than a year of their sentences and returned to Paris as heroes and free men.
New Zealand’s government at the time called the bombing, which sank the ship in the port of Auckland, the country’s first terror attack.
High Court Justice Simon France had earlier ruled New Zealand’s public interest outranked the two former agents’ right to privacy.
Three Court of Appeal judges said today that it had no authority to hear a challenge to a High Court decision on whether the news media can search a case file and use material from it.
The appellate court’s ruling means Television New Zealand can use the video footage unless the High Court orders it not to pending any Supreme Court hearing.
The French secret agents have previously indicated they would take the case to the nation’s Supreme Court in their efforts to stop the footage being broadcast.
Their lawyer was not available today to confirm whether the pair would pursue further court action.
