Ahmed Zaoui

The NZ Herald has details of the Supreme Court decision on Ahmed Zaoui.

Frog has some excellent analysis of the pros and cons for Zaoui. No Right Turn has also gone into good detail, with his major concern being that Winston may be Immigration Minister when a decision is made.

Personally I think Zaoui will not have the security risk certificate upheld by the Inspector-General. This is because of the new threshold to deport which is “the person in question must be thought on reasonable grounds to pose a serious threat to the security of New Zealand; the threat must be based on objectively reasonable grounds and the threatened harm must be substantial.”

I beleive Zaoui had been supportive of terrorist activity in Europe, and that the criminal convictions against him were justified. However that does not mean he poses a substantial and serious threat to NZ directly. Our physical isolation, lack of support networks for any such activity, plus the fact he is so well known that he would be unable to do anything covertly, all add up to a very hard task to say he poses a serious threat to NZ directly.

So my pick is the certificate will not be upheld. And unless I am mistaken the Minister only gets discretion if it it is upheld (ie they can still decline to deport) but they do not have discretion if it is not upheld. Not 100% sure on that last point though.