On Wednesday, the government was loudly telling us that it needed to legislate to allow it to impose "control orders" - effectively a parole regime, but imposed without charge, prosecution, conviction or real evidence - on suspected terrorists because they couldn't be prosecuted for their supposed crimes. Today, it turns out that that's not the case:
A warrant to arrest the man called the "bumbling Jihadi" - New Zealand-born man Mark Taylor - has been issued in Wellington District Court.
A charge sheet under the name Muhammad Abdul Rahman Hamza Omar John Daniel was filed in Wellington with a date showing he was due to appear before a registrar on Friday.
[...]
The charging document shows a Hamilton address and the charge is that between 11 June 2014 and 24 April 2015 at Raqqa, Syria he threatened to do grievous bodily harm to New Zealand police officers and soldiers
The charge is from the Crimes Act and carries a seven year maximum jail term.
(While the threats were made in Syria, the threatened assaults would have had to have happened in New Zealand, which seems to establish jurisdiction)
So why do we need control orders again?
