Monday, October 02, 2006



No justice for Fernando Pereira

So, it seems that there will be no justice for Fernando Pereira, and that Gerard Royal, Louis Dallias, and the other Rainbow Warrior bombers have successfully gotten away with murder, thanks to a decision in 1991 to no longer pursue the case. This is gutless, absolutely gutless, and I'm ashamed that our government shows so little regard for the lives of visitors to this country. But it seems we'll accept anything, even murder and terrorism, provided our farmers get to keep selling their sheep...

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 10/02/2006 01:11:00 PM

5 comments:

Well said.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/02/2006 01:33:00 PM

Calling them murderers is both technically incorrect, and needlessly emotive.

The person who died, died through his own sheer stupidity in going back onto an already sinking ship just to retrieve his camera, fer chrissake!

That's Darwin Award territory, not murder.

The bombers made sure everyone had enough time to get off, by not using enough exlosives that would so thoroughly rupture the hull that the boat would sink immediately, or placing the charges in such a way as to cause casualites, all options they could have chosen if they were actually murderers rather than merely military operatives attempting to sink an enemy vessel.

In fact they even did it while the ship was in harbour, and while as many people as possibe were already off the boat. If they'd been vindictive they could have waited until the ship was in deep water before blowing the charges, after disabling the life rafts and communications equipment, and placng the charges to maximize the loss of life.

It's pretty damn obvious that they did what they were required to do in the safest way possible.

You can be outraged that the French government chose to make a military strike against a terrorist organization in New Zealand waters as much as you like, but that's what it was.

At the time Greenpeace was still directly associated with the sort of people who later broke off and became Sea Shepherd and other actual terrorist organizations, and New Zealand's government was harbouring and supporting that terrorist organization.

Your post is one of those "re-writing history" things you usually complain about!

Finally, not even at the time was anyone stupid enough to try and charge people with murder, at the most they could have been charged with manslaughter, and I frankly think it was needlessly vindictive and potentially aganist the Geneva convention to charge prisoners of war with civilian crimes incurred whilst doing their duty against an enemy combatant nation!

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/02/2006 04:18:00 PM

anonymous: "Finally, not even at the time was anyone stupid enough to try and charge people with murder, at the most they could have been charged with manslaughter, and I frankly think it was needlessly vindictive and potentially aganist the Geneva convention to charge prisoners of war with civilian crimes incurred whilst doing their duty against an enemy combatant nation!"

WTF?

They were charged with murder.

As part of a deal with the French Government the charges were lowered to manslaughter.

Terrorist bombing clearly comes within s 167(d) of the Crimes Act:

"Culpable homicide is murder in each of the following cases:
...
If the offender for any unlawful object does an act that he knows to be likely to cause death, and thereby kills any person, though he may have desired that his object should be effected without hurting any one."

Those charged were not prisoners of war. France had not declared war on New Zealand. New Zealand was not an 'enemy combatant nation'. A POW is someone captured during time of war in the uniform of a hostile nation. Spies and saboteurs have never, under the laws of war, been eligible for POW status. And at any rate, the deliberate targetting of civilians is a war crime.

 Posted by Graeme Edgeler : 10/02/2006 05:43:00 PM

Good one anonymous. "At the time Greenpeace was still directly associated with the sort of people who later broke off and became Sea Shepherd and other actual terrorist organizations.." Now, putting aside the thoroughly Orwellain and objectionable "Pat Robertson New Faith Based dictionary" meaning of "terrorist" which you appear to have adopted, It seems you have revealed what should be a closely guarded state secret in France, namely their posession of a time machine which allows them to use actions of some people in the future to justify their state terrorism in the past.

Secondly "...The person who died, died through his own sheer stupidity in going back onto an already sinking ship just to retrieve his camera..." is the same sort of logic that blames a obvious lack of swift and sure footed nimbleness on the part of Lebanese civilians for their high casaulties at the hands of the merciful Israeli military.

You are an imbecile, an unfortunately reasonable conclusion I have reached by your struggle with temporal continuity, your flawed logic, your inabilty to use a proper dictionary and your clear preference for Fox News.

 Posted by Sanctuary : 10/03/2006 11:11:00 AM

As well as everything else that has been said in relation to Anonymous, I reject the idea that Sea Shepherd are a terrorist organisation. A better definition would be "bloody stupid".

After all, we don't consider somebody who, say, breaks a window to be a terrorist, do we? Sea Shepherd deals largely in wilful property damage. And if that window was broken in order to allow somebody to escape from a fire, nobody would be complaining.

Even if that is a really, really bad metaphor, Sea Shepherd aren't terrorists. They're enforcing international law. In a stupid way.

 Posted by Chris Nimmo : 10/03/2006 01:12:00 PM

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