The fatal spying warrant
On May 19, 2014, prime minister John Key formally acknowledged that the GCSB has been, and presumably still is, providing information to the US which is used in the so-called drone wars. He said “it is almost certain” that the GSCB’s information was used “in identifying targets” for drone attacks in Afghanistan and possibly in other countries.
However, he was “quite comfortable”
with it and said that everything the GCSB did was within the law.
The issue came to the fore because of
revelations that a NZ citizen, Abu Suhaib al-Australi, was killed in
Yemen in a drone strike in November 2013, and that Key had issued a
warrant to the GCSB to spy on him. Although US officials say that
al-Australi wasn’t the main target but rather “collateral damage”
(along with 4 other people), it’s likely that the GCSB’s
information was used in this killing.
All that was needed to convince the
prime minister to issue the fatal warrant to the GCSB to spy on
al-Australi was that “he had gone [to Yemen] and gone to a
terrorist training camp” and was “reported
to be an al-Qaida foot soldier” (TV3,
16 April 2014).
Other
people say, he was teaching English in Yemen.
Normally, the killing of a NZ citizen
by another government without any form of trial would be the cause of
moderate to serious diplomatic rows, but in this case it is simply
accepted. NZ is so far involved in the “Five Eyes” (the spying
agreement between the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and NZ) that the
government blindly accepts the US’s jurisdiction over NZ citizens
in a foreign country.
