Deborah Manning decides that if the SIS won’t reveal their evidence, then she will find it independently by travelling to Europe.
What do you do when the state locks you in jail and calls you a terrorist - but refuses to say why? John Keir tells the inside story behind New Zealand's biggest security scandal in Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File. Today: Episode 7, Playing Tricks.
Deborah Manningknew she had hit the jackpot.
Sitting in front of her was a man she had tracked from New Zealand and was finally meeting face to face at a secret location in Europe.
He was perhaps the only person in the world who could save her client Ahmed Zaoui from being deported from New Zealand to Algeria on trumped up charges of terrorism.
Colonel Mohammed Samraoui used to be a top spy in the Algerian Secret Service, the DRS. He'd become head of the political police, had trained with the KGB in Moscow, and in 1990 had become the Deputy Chief of Algerian counter terrorism.
In 1996 Samraoui had refused to assassinate members of the FIS, Zaoui's political party, and had sought asylum in Germany, where he was given refugee status.
After Manning tracked Samraoui through Algerian exiles in Europe, he agreed to meet her in an apartment in Belgium.
Manning was in Europe with Matt Robson, the Progressive (formerly Alliance) member of Parliament, who agreed to help her conduct clandestine detective work on Zaoui's behalf.
It was winter in Belgium and bitterly cold. And the scheduled meeting almost didn't happen.
"When the meeting was due to begin, he was due to arrive, he was late," Manning recounts in the podcast Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File.
"Which is not like him. He's a very punctual person. So I asked Matt to go down and wait for him."
Matt Robson picks up the story.
"Unfortunately I went down with my Russian bear hat, a huge black coat. And I like cigars ... And I was smoking one on the roundabout."
It was like a scene from a Cold War spy novel.
Deborah Manning cuts in. "Samraoui called me thinking there was a Russian agent waiting for him."
At that time Samraoui was on Algeria's 'most wanted' lists and it's certain that the Algerian secret service would have tried to stop him talking to Manning had they been able to do so.
"He took off," Matt Robson remembers. "And so I come up and find Deborah is on the phone to him. And he explains there's someone watching me, I can't come. And then we worked out it was me.
"So we eventually got him. He came back."
Barrister Deborah Manning, pictured here in 2011, who became known for representing asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui. Photo / Paul Estcourt
Mohammed Samraoui – a chess grand master and a man with a phenomenal memory for detail – then proceeded to recount his role in the machinations of the Algerian secret service.
"It was more the heaviness of the system of oppression that he described," Robson says. "The torture, the killings. He could tell you facts, dates and times. Deborah had her lists of things she wanted to ask him and he didn't falter in what he could tell you."
Samraoui agreed he could travel to New Zealand to give evidence at the secret hearing to consider the security risk certificate against Zaoui.
But Manning remembers she still wasn't entirely confident. "Will he survive until the hearing?" she asked herself. "And will he continue to cooperate?"
Enemy of the State: The Ahmed Zaoui File was made with the support of NZ On Air.
