Face to face: Zaoui and the spy

By MICHELE HEWITSON


In Court Room 12 an Algerian asylum seeker - the man suspected of posing a risk to national security - and the chief of the Security Intelligence Service were briefly just arm's length from each other.

For Ahmed Zaoui this was a rare semi-public outing: his first in almost a year. For Richard Woods it was the first time a director of the SIS had been called to give evidence in a New Zealand courtroom since 1985.

Woods knows a bit about Zaoui.

What he knows about Zaoui is not known by Zaoui, or by his lawyers. It has been in the "too secret" basket, which is all very super spooky, so when the head Spook took the stand there was a frisson of excitement in the public gallery and much flipping of notebooks by the media.

We look at Woods. Zaoui takes little glances. Woods looks at the judge. We look at Zaoui.

For a bloke who has been banged up for quite a while, he is looking very dapper. He was in deep disguise: a man in a nice suit.

As was Woods, in his pinstripes. He had no objection to his picture being taken.

Zaoui sat the long day out on his counsel's bench. He looked frequently across at the press benches. He fiddled with his glasses. He rubbed his eyes often, as though the public gaze was a shade too bright.

There was little to read on his face, although he grinned broadly as he shook the hands of his legal counsel. His large hand swallowed up the tiny paw of Deborah Manning, the human rights lawyer whose pale, earnest face has become as well known as her client's.

As befits the job, Richard Woods' face is less well known. You could walk past him on the street without a second glance. We got to hear the voice of the top SIS man. It was as deep as a secret - and sounded the way voices do in the movies when spies make calls on phones using voice distorters.

There was a lovely photo opportunity: Woods chatting in the public gallery with Zaoui supporter and Green MP Keith Locke. Woods in his pinstripes; Locke in his "Greens for Refugees" T-shirt.

Pleasant chat? "He seems," said Locke, "a jolly gentleman."

It was supposed to be jolly serious. For a court hearing involving a man who is supposed to be a security threat and a man whose job is secret intelligence you might have expected security to be tight. There were guards on the courtroom doors and you had to show ID. Despite the sign warning that "You are about to pass through a metal detector", we didn't. No one searched the bags that had to be "available for searching".

The supporters turned up to stand outside the High Court with banners and then to sit inside in the public gallery, some wearing "Free Ahmed Zaoui" T-shirts; one wearing one of those little name tags which more commonly say, "Hi, my name is ... " This one said, "Free Ahmed Zaoui. Now".

The placards were left outside, leaning against a wall.

The one which read "Ahmed Zaoui's victimisation proves War on 'Terrorism' - War on Democracy" has scratched on it, in very faint pen: "Fascist Pig Go!"

Despite the angry expressions on the boards outside - and the woman who says, "Who the heck do the SIS think they are in any case?" - inside the court everyone is terribly well-behaved.

There was some craning of necks to get a look at Zaoui. For many it was the first sighting of the man who has become a cause celebre of the human rights movement.

For Paul Buchanan, "an interested observer", more usually described as a political science lecturer at Auckland University and a former United States intelligence agent with top-secret clearance, this was "a little bit of history in the making". He looked thrilled to bits to be there.

There were police scattered through the public gallery, the suits and the supporters.

And, "Who's that guy with the SIS guy?" asked a photographer.

"Probably a spook," said everyone hopefully. Because, as court dramas go, it was as dramatic as watching two men in suits sitting in chairs.