Auckland terror attack: The Government tried for years to deport supermarket attacker

Sunday, 5 September 2021

Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen​, the terrorist who attacked shoppers with a knife at Countdown in New Lynn, was battling attempts by the Government to remove his refugee status so he could be deported.

A string of failed attempts to protect the public from Samsudeen, including unsuccessful efforts to deport him, were revealed late last night after suppression orders were lifted.

Samsudeen, 32, walked into a Countdown supermarket in Auckland on Friday afternoon, and took a knife from the shelf to attack shoppers, injuring seven people before being shot dead by two police officers who were surveilling him. He can now be named after a court suppression was lifted late on Saturday evening.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in a statement issued late on Saturday, said immigration authorities tried for years to deport the terrorist.

They also sought to detain him while deportation was considered to keep the community safe but were prevented by the law from doing so.

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**

Ardern said the terrorist – who she has refused to name though his name is now in the public arena – arrived in New Zealand in October 2011 on a student visa. He was 22 at the time.

“Shortly after arriving he made a claim for refugee status. Immigration New Zealand declined this claim in 2012, but he appealed to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal and was successful. He was granted refugee status in December 2013.

“In 2016 the terrorist came to the attention of the police and the NZSIS.

“In the course of these investigations, Immigration New Zealand were made aware of information that led them to believe the individual’s refugee status was fraudulently obtained. The process was started to cancel his refugee status, and with it, his right to stay in New Zealand,” Ardern said.

His refugee status was cancelled in February 2019 and deportation liability notices were served. However, Samsudeen appeared to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, and “for a number of reasons” the deportation could not continue until the criminal trial resolved.

“Immigration New Zealand explored whether the Immigration Act might allow them to detain the individual while his deportation appeal was heard but legal advice said that wasn’t an option,” Ardern said.

“It was incredibly disappointing and frustrating when legal advice came back to say this wasn’t an option.”

Crown Law also advised Immigration New Zealand that deportation was unlikely to proceed as Samsudeen was probably a “protected person”, due to his coming from Sri Lanka and his likely treatment if he returned.

Ardern said she met officials in July this year and expressed concern that the law could allow someone to remain here who obtained their immigration status fraudulently and posed a threat to our national security.

“I asked for work to be undertaken to look at whether we should amend our law, in the context of our international obligations.”

The attack happened before that was done.

Samsudeen gained refugee status in 2013 after claiming he had been attacked, kidnapped, and tortured, due to his family’s political background in Sri Lanka.

But, after coming to the attention of authorities for his extremist activity, Immigration NZ in May 2018 began an attempt to remove his refugee status – in hope of deporting him.

The attempt to revoke refugee status came after he tried to travel to Syria to join the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), and was charged with distributing Isis propaganda. He pled guilty to the charge a month after he was notified of the attempt to remove his refugee protections.

More than three-years on, the argument over his refugee status remained before the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, as of Friday.

During the prior Labour-coalition Government, Stuff has been told, NZ First ministers asked questions about why Samsudeen could not be deported in a Cabinet meeting.

Ardern, at a press conference earlier on Saturday, did not deny Samsudeen’s case was discussed among ministers, and, asked if ministers were divided about deportation action, she said “not at all”.

Facing questions about the Government’s failure to overhaul terrorism laws prior to the attack, Ardern claimed the Government had sought to hurry changes to the terrorism laws in the months after the man was released into the community.

Officials have warned successive Governments for nearly a decade that existing terror laws were insufficient, and the Royal Commission of Inquiry into March 15 recommended the Government criminalise terror planning so police and intelligence agencies could “disrupt” attacks before they occur.

Such a provision does not exist in the Terror Suppression Act 2002, and attempts by police to prosecute alleged terror planning – including after Samsudeen purchased a hunting knife in 2018 – had failed.

Ardern said she was first briefed on problems with the law in 2018, and policy work continued through 2019. Proposed changes to the law were released in April.

She said she met with officials on August 9 to discuss what more could be done to further mitigate the risk posed by the Samsudeen.

Earlier this week, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster suggested expediting the proposed law changes.

Within 48 hours of this discussion, Ardern said, Justice Minister Kris Faafoi called the chair of the justice select committee to hurry it along. This phone call came on the day of the attack.

Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont​ said, due to the protections afforded to refugees, it was only possible to deport in cases where the person will no longer be persecuted in their country of origin, or if they committed a serious offence.

“If he was a New Zealand resident there is a section in the immigration act that would have enabled the minister to cancel the residency on the grounds of risk to national security, and he would have no appeal rights either.

“But if he was a refugee and was a New Zealand resident, then it's a pretty pointless exercise to cancel the residency … they would have to look at cancelling the refugee status.

McClymont said, looking at the offences Samsudeen had been charged with in the years before the attack, his “initial thought” was that it would not reach the high threshold of a serious crime that endangered the community.

Coster, speaking alongside Ardern on Saturday, confirmed a seventh victim of the attack had been located overnight. This victim had been injured by the knife but was not stabbed, and cared for the injury at their home.

He provided a revised account of how quickly police acted. He had said on Friday that it took 60 seconds for police to shoot the Samsudeen, after hearing the commotion of the attack.

However, CCTV footage showed the first stabbing occurred 60 to 90 seconds prior to police realising an attack was underway.

Coster said the police surveillance officers, part of a team of about 30 who had been tailing him 24/7 for 53 days, were not able to be nearer to the man as the store had fewer customers than usual due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

“The risk of compromise is greatly increased.”

The terrorist had been highly paranoid that he was being monitored. Coster said the Samsudeen had previously accused other people, not police officers, of surveilling him.

There remained no indication he was about to launch an attack. His movements earlier in the day suggested he was planning for the future, Coster said, and he spent 10 minutes in the Countdown shopping before taking a knife from a shelf.

Coster said it may never be known whether he planned to carry out the attack at the supermarket, or it was “opportunistic”.

Massey University teaching fellow John Battersby, an expert in counter-terrorism, said the extensive surveillance of Samsudeen showed he was “right at the top” of national security concerns for the Government.

“We don’t have lots and lots of people on this, we would have a small number … I'd be surprised if there was any other [requiring that surveillance], or if there were many others.”

He said it was “just dumb” that terror planning and preparation could not be prosecuted under existing law.

But he said the proposed law changes likely would not have captured Samsudeen’s activity in the lead up to the attack.

'[The laws] would apply most often where a group was involved, or where an individual had left sufficient evidence to meet the eventual sufficiency rules in court for the police to prosecute.

“In the case of a lone actor, who makes his decision in his own head, doesn't give any indication … doesn't do any kind of planning where evidence can be obtained of it. That's going to be very, very difficult.”

But, if the proposed laws were in place when police accused Samsudeen with terror planning in 2018, the charges “potentially” might have stuck.

“But we are speculating,” Battersby said.