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New protective dome fitted over one of the satellites at the Waihopai spy base - Source: ONE News -
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The Green Party believes Wednesday's acquittal of three men who slashed a dome at the Waihopai spy base will help penetrate the cloud of secrecy around the operations of the base.
Adrian Leason, a teacher, Dominican friar Peter Murnane and farmer Sam Land were cleared of all charges after two hours of deliberation by a jury at the Wellington District Court.
The trio had pleaded not guilty to burglary and wilful damage at the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) facility.
The prosecution said the trio cut their way through fences into the base, then slashed the plastic cover over a satellite dish with sickles.
Lawyers admitted the men attacked the base but said they were driven by a belief that the satellite caused human suffering and their actions to shut it down, if only temporarily, were lawful.
Green MP Keith Locke has described the not guilty verdicts as a great victory for the peace movement, which has long campaigned to close down the foreign Waihopai spy base.
He says it will make it easier for MPs like himself to get answers on what really happens there and whose interests it serves.
One of the acquitted men has told Breakfast he wants other New Zealander to join the cause.
"As a father of seven kids and a gardener and a primary school teacher, I'm not going to be rushing back down to Waihopai," says Adrian Leason.
"But my sincere encouragement is that through other due processes New Zealanders will say this base is not the Kiwi way of doing things and we don't really want any part of it."
And a lobby group has called for the spy base to be closed
Christchurch-based Anti-Bases Campaign has called for prosecution of the base operators for crimes against humanity.
Spokesman Murray Horton says the "Domebusters" believed they had the law on their side and were proud of what they did.
"They did it because Waihopai operates, in all but name, as an outpost of US intelligence on New Zealand soil," he says.
He wants the base closed immediately.
Murnane, a Dominican friar who represented himself throughout the trial, said outside the court, he believed the satellite aided crimes against humanity.
"I had to do this, it was necessary for me," he said.
"We wanted, in going into Waihopai, to challenge these warfaring behaviours and I think we have done this.
"We have shown New Zealanders there is a US spy base in our
midst."
