Ten years of injustice: the long, hard road taken by the CTV Families Group

Monday, 30 November 2020

CTV Families Group spokesman Maan Alkaisi addresses families and the media over his concerns about the police's failure to prosecute after the 2011 building collapse.

ANALYSIS: The latest move by a group of families seeking justice over the CTV building collapse is best captured in one comment from their lawyer.

“[It’s] going to be difficult,” Wellington barrister Gary Turkington said.

On Monday, three years to the day since police announced they would not be pressing charges over the tragedy, relatives of those who died called on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to appoint “one or two” retired High Court judges to review the police decision.

The Canterbury Television (CTV) building collapsed in the February 2011 earthquake, killing 115 people. A royal commission of inquiry found it did so due to a flawed design by engineer David Harding, who was working “beyond his competence” and was largely unsupervised by his boss, Alan Reay.

* Decision to drop investigation into CTV engineer to be reviewed

* CTV families claim prosecution decision based on incomplete information, urge Govt to reconsider

Alkaisi, who lost his wife Maysoon Abbas in the tragedy, refuses to give up the quest for justice.

* Husband of woman killed in CTV building collapse wants closure

Police spent more than three years investigating Harding and Reay, eventually concluding they had enough evidence to charge both men with 115 counts of manslaughter. Ultimately, though, they decided not to prosecute, on the advice of Crown Law.

The apparent U-turn upset many families of the victims, who felt the case was overwhelming and that police had never properly explained why it was never brought.

For three years the group has been unwavering in its call that charges be laid. “We still have no justice, no accountability and no closure,” spokesman Maan Alkaisi said on Monday.

The appeal to Ardern for an independent review is the latest effort in the group’s campaign for that closure.

Alkaisi hoped a review would “report on the robustness and integrity of the decision-making process in respect of the police decision not to pursue prosecution”.

It is a big ask. Firstly, Ardern met with the CTV families following the police decision back in 2017 and told them the government didn’t have the power to intervene.

She would need a very good reason to now ask for a quasi-judicial review of what was an administrative process.

115 people died when the CTV building collapsed in the February 2011 earthquake. Many families of the victims have since called for accountability over the tragedy.

On Monday, Ardern said she would review Alkaisi’s request closely before responding properly.

“The complication with … CTV of course around the time that had passed, where liability or culpability sat, has been well traversed and I don’t want to raise an expectation of reopening that but I do want to make sure that I reply to the letter.”

Second, even if the government was to commission a review, whoever got the job would have no real power. They could, in theory, find fault with police procedure and ask them to reconsider their decision not to prosecute on that basis, but no more than that.

“At the end of the day it still is a matter for the police,” Turkington told Stuff on Monday.

“They can’t be directed by an outside agency … Obviously if they’re getting pointed in the right direction, I imagine they would do that but at the moment we need somebody with sufficient stature to say ‘Hey listen, it’s wrong and you should have another real look at it because process hasn’t been followed here’.

“Getting that decision revisited is going to be difficult but that’s where it is at the moment.”

Third, there has very recently been a review of police procedure on CTV, and the police passed with flying colours.

The families group lodged a complaint with the Independent Police Conduct Authority in August 2019.

Authority chair Judge Colin Doherty responded via letter in September this year, saying he found the police report “exemplary” and the decision not to press manslaughter charges an “appropriate exercise of their discretion and not unreasonable”.

If nothing else, Monday’s announcement underscored that nearly 10 years on from the devastating CTV collapse, the anger and bitterness of many of the people closest to it is more entrenched than ever.

Maan Alkaisi, and other members of the group, are defiant.

Addressing the media, Alkaisi, whose wife, Maysoon Abbas, died in the collapse, outlined years of grievances over the case, starting with the decision not to prosecute and followed by a perceived lack of transparency over that decision, fruitless appeals to the Attorney-General, and the conduct of the deputy Solicitor-General, who wrote the decisive Crown Law opinion, in explaining his reasoning.

Even the Pike River mine explosion, which happened just a few months before the Christchurch earthquake, was invoked several times.

One member of that disaster’s families group was present at the press conference.

“We share a lot of similarities with the Pike River families whom we support and admire in their quest for accountability and justice,” Alkaisi said.

“Nobody can silence us.”