Limbo with Zaoui's guardian

Deborah Manning has spent the past three years defending Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui. She remains optimistic, despite ongoing setbacks. Picture / Dean Purcell

Deborah Manning, the human rights lawyer, is quite happy to sit on a sodden step to have her picture taken. She is less keen to adopt a pose which, she says, "feels diminutive. I'm not coy".

No, she's not that. She doesn't disagree when I say, "No, tough as old boots".

"I think I'm very tough. I think I'm very determined and I'm very determined on this case."

She is, or has been, elusive. When I phoned her on Tuesday it was with no hope that she would agree to an interview. We've been trying for two years. This has been an entertaining enough exercise; a game of sorts. It has been a getting-to-know-you, by phone and email. It has also, I assume, on her part been a getting-to-trust-you time.

She is often described as fragile and whenever I've heard that description, I've thought, "and stubborn as a mule".

The timing was right now. She was, I hazard, angry enough to do it. She laughs and says "possibly". This week the August hearings by the SIS Inspector into the evidence against Manning's client Ahmed Zaoui, were postponed indefinitely. Speaking to her on Tuesday she sounded deflated. She talked of being in limbo, again, and of the legal team and Zaoui feeling as though they had had a carpet pulled out from under them. She has rallied a bit by Thursday. She is, she says, well used by now to bashing her head against brick walls. Despite having the flu - her health was last year "very, very poor and it is still poor" because of stress - she gives out a quiet, tired determination.

It would be silly to ask if she'd had any inkling at the beginning of how long and hard a process it would be, whether she'd have put her hand up - because how could she have known? But "well, I was thinking about that very question this morning. Would I have done this if I knew at the beginning what would have been involved?"

And? "Oh, I think I'd probably adopt one of Mr Zaoui's answers: That I'm a fatalist. So, maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure ... There have been times when I've felt very disillusioned."

Just now, she says "It would be fair to say that I'm quite angry with a lot of the officials who have dealt with this case and the political leaders who have dealt with this case. And I think that they will look back on their careers and they will be ashamed."

We will return to this topic a little later and she will sound as much perplexed as angry.

It would be hard to detect anger from her countenance. She looks, as always, calm and tidy. She wears sombre colours and no make-up. She was on TV on Tuesday night and was wearing lipstick. She screws her face up when this is mentioned, even though it is in the context of how glamorous she looked. She will sit, very still, on the very edge of a couch, taking small bites of tea loaf and jammy tarts for over an hour. She is not a person who makes crumbs. She doesn't fidget.

So, for two years, I've had on my desk a note taken from the first, very formal, phone call. She'd said, "I rather expect you're calling me because I'm the lawyer for Ahmed Zaoui."

She was making a distinction and although she has been the public face of the case for three and half years now, she is not at all interested in talking about herself. "It is not something I have ever looked for, or need. I just want people to understand what this case is about and who Ahmed Zaoui is."

It is a bit tough for her then because we have developed something of a fascination with her. She amends this to "maybe an interest. Well, it's been a high profile case for a number of years". She is not given to hyperbole. Which is not to say that, despite her composure, she is without passion. Her ideals, and they are passionate, are there for everyone to see. They are so much a part of who she is that they are almost the whole of her. She was brought up in an Irish Catholic family and spends a lot of time with a Muslim man and a bunch of monks at the St Benedicts Dominican Priory where Zaoui was released to on bail after two years in prison. "But I wouldn't say I was part of any organised religion."

She has "resistance to people calling my principles ideals in the sense that they are unrealistic". She believes in fairness and justice and a sense of duty.

She was active in the Labour Party from her teens. When I ask if they had an eye on her as a future politician, she shrugs. Did she have her eye on them? "It's fair to say that my links with the party have not been particularly active since the Zaoui case." She hasn't resigned her membership, "but only because that would seem to be, possibly, an action that would be given more attention than it deserves".

It is easy to make her sound cool and distant because of that composure, but she isn't. She is warm, if cautious, and obviously very bright. She is aware of single-mindedness - necessary, she would say - and what she likes about the priory is that the fathers "love life and they're always talking about a little bird they've seen on a tree, that they hadn't seen before. They're really aware of the small, beautiful details of life and that's something I really enjoy about them. When you're working on a case like this it's really easy to be fighting a lot and you kind of miss what's going on around you."

When I show her a pot of crocuses just emerging, she says with what sounds like real regret, "Oh, I haven't planted any spring bulbs".

She thinks she must be a natural optimist. This always sounds like a jolly way to be, but perhaps not always easy. It must be optimism, she says, which keeps her going. "I think I must believe in the decency of our country and I must believe in the decency of our institutions because I just can't comprehend the thought of New Zealand being an unjust country. And I don't know how easy it would be for me to live here if an injustice was carried out in this case."

She says she has already been disappointed, but, to come back to this, "I think there will be people who feel very ashamed of themselves". This, I suggest, might not happen simply because she couldn't bear the alternative. She is not naïve; she is hopeful. "I am aware that people do twist things to justify themselves. I know but I think that particularly anyone who has met Mr Zaoui ... " She tells a story about how when Zaoui was out shopping, he met a prison manager who had been harsh to him. The man, she says, in the face of Zaoui's joyful greeting, apologised.

She is much better at telling stories about Zaoui than about herself.

When I called her back because I realised I had forgotten to ask about a member of her family, for example, she asked me to not put in any details about her parents. This is part of her "extreme privacy". She is also wary, she says, of other people being associated with the Z word merely by the accident of their association with her.

This, I think, is fair enough. Just because she has agreed, at last, to talk about herself, or at least a bit about herself, shouldn't mean she has to drag her family into it. She does answer readily enough when I ask her whether being a twin has had any effect on her. "Well, I've always been acutely aware of other people. You don't just think of yourself, ever. And, sure, I think that's probably where I have my very strong sense of community and other people's well being. I was always very protective of my brother."

She chose her role in life early, then, or it chose her. She is Zaoui's lawyer, his family's lawyer and also his "guardian". She is responsible for his overall care: his morale, his psychological state and his legal issues. She is emphatically not, she says, his friend.

There are boundaries in the lawyer/client relationship and "I am old-school in this".

Still, it would be more difficult if she didn't like the guy, surely. "If he was a difficult person? Well, certainly Mr Zaoui does make it quite easy to go to these lengths because of his graciousness and lack of demands. You know, there's that sort of paradox there: because he doesn't expect, it makes it easier to give."

She sighs when I say she has done a very good job of selling the man who was known in New Zealand "as the Algerian terrorist" as a human being. "Well, I don't think we sold you a human being. I think Mr Zaoui was able to be seen for himself. I mean there's no guise with him. I would say there's no manufacturing there."

That'll do, I think, just as well to sum up the lawyer for Ahmed Zaoui.