Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui is continuing the battle for his freedom from the Dominican Priory in Newton, Auckland. Picture / Greg Bowker

Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui is continuing the battle for his freedom from the Dominican Priory in Newton, Auckland. Picture / Greg Bowker

Ahmed Zaoui, who needs no further introduction, says his English isn't up to much. I'm not so sure. He gets it all right when I say, "what a lot we know about you".

He likes a bit of sport, so he leans forward, his eyes bright. "You know so much," he says. He opens his arms wide. "Nothing to hide. Ha, ha."

So let's get this one out of the way. "You are a terrorist, aren't you? Yes. Thank you. You can comment." He makes a whooping noise, like a child enjoying a game. "Ha, ha. You push me to say yes! Aaagh!"

And Deborah Manning, his lawyer, who is almost as famous as her client, says: "Michele Hewitson has cracked it. Case solved."

Obviously this is all just playing, and Zaoui could be a terrorist for all I know. But even if he is and we let him go about the country plotting terrible terrorist acts, he wouldn't get very far now, would he? Everyone knows his face and that, you would think, could make plotting tricky.

We haven't come to find out if he's a terrorist. We've come to find out why he's achieved a strange sort of celebrity. He recently made an appearance at the music awards where he sang with Dave Dobbyn.

On Thursday he launched his first book of poetry, Migrant Birds: 24 Contemplations. There are 24 poems, one for each month he spent in prison. Bill Manhire has written the introduction.

So here is the prisoner turned poet in the lounge of the Priory offering sweet pastries he's made - but can't eat because of Ramadan - and Father Jack's scones. Would we like mint tea, or cardamom coffee? The polite answer, he says, "is both".

He gives me and the photographer a present - copies of the fund-raising cookbook: Conversations Over Couscous: Cooking with Ahmed Zaoui. There is a picture of him on the front tossing couscous. When I say he is just like Jamie Oliver he laughs.

We talk about the poetry for what seems to me to be a decent time, although he will say a little plaintively at the end: "We don't talk about the poetry!"

You can see why he might be sick of talking about himself, of trying to convince us that he is a good bloke.

But this is the odd, unspoken deal that has been struck. He has become a human rights symbol of sorts.

People want to hear what he has to say but they also, I suspect, just want to see him.

He was sent more than 2000 letters when he was in prison. I ask whether he thought he had become a romantic figure; whether some of the women who wrote were a bit in love with the idea of him. He stares at me blankly, raises his impressive eyebrows, then laughs immoderately.