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Court hearing on Dotcom raid continues

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Court hearing on Dotcom raid continues

3News NZ

Kim Dotcom

Kim Dotcom

A court hearing into the police raid on the Coatesville mansion of Megaupload founder and internet piracy accused Kim Dotcom will continue on Wednesday.

The hearing at the High Court in Auckland follows on from a court ruling in late June that the search warrants used to carry out the raid in January were invalid.

The hearing is set down for three days.

On Tuesday, Dotcom told the court that he was punched and kicked by police during the raid. He said he was working on his bed when police arrived on the morning on the raid.

Dotcom was found by police in the safe room and he said he put his hands up when police entered the room, but that he was punched, kicked and pushed to the ground.

He told the court that he and his family are reminded of what happened during the raid every day.

"Our beautiful home was turned into a haunted house," Dotcom said.

"Life is not the same after what happened."

Dotcom told crown prosecutor John Pike he would have co-operated with police had they knocked on his door, rather than banging it down.

On Tuesday afternoon a member of the police special tactics group, whose name is suppressed, was questioned by defence lawyer Paul Davison about whether the police response was appropriate given the level of risk posed by Dotcom.

Dotcom and his three co-accused, Mathias Ortmann, Fin Batato and Bram Van der Kolk, face copyright, racketeering and money laundering charges in the US.

An extradition hearing is scheduled for March next year.

NZN

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Comments

6/09/2012 6:21:37 p.m.

dennis wrote:

Mike. Can't figure you. Baffled. They have to be actually accused of extradition offences before any of the stuff you talk about can be considered. That has not even been determined yet. A High Court judge asked but Kim Dotcom's lawyer said he didn't have sufficient information to put forward opinion on that. Pity he didn't just say "I don't know" and the Judge would have been left in an awkward position keeping Kim locked-up

8/08/2012 8:06:43 a.m.

Mike wrote:

What is standard practise for Police going into a place with firearms?

The standard is to go in with overwhelming force so there is no dead police. This is standard around the world for police. NZ police have also lost officers when they haven't done this.

Dotcom had an illegal firearm, and the police were warned that Dotcom probably had firearms and that he was unlikely to come quietly. That was enough to demand a substantial police presence. And what happened, Dotcom didn't come quietly as police were warned.

Dotcom had security on the property, and they had firearms.

NZ police is not used to potential shooting situations where a house being raided has firearms, plus hired security with firearms - this is more what one expects watching some US TV show!

Lets face it, a small gang headquarters which was much smaller than dotcoms property has seen 30-50 police in a NZ raid, and given the size of the property and not finding dotcom, they needed more people to secure the property than they would a small gang headquarters.

Punched/kicked/forced to the ground? I wonder how much of that is true? Someone not being helpful, police will put on the ground to handle them, again standard procedure, and someone the size of dotcom, going down will be a 7.0 earthquake in itself! Enough to get bruising even with no punches or kicks from police. An uncooperative person will get manhandled by police, but that is not being punched and kicked. If he was punched and kicked, I expect it would have been in the media months ago, much like protestors flopping about always complain about police brutality immediately.