Four people charged after the 2007 Urewera police raids have given not guilty pleas at the beginning of their trial.
Tame
Iti, Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara, Emily Bailey and Urs Signer face charges
of participating in an organised criminal group and firearms charges in
connection with the raids on October 15, 2007.
Iti and Kemara
gave their not guilty pleas in Maori on Monday at the start of their
trial at the High Court in Auckland, while Signer said "I am innocent of
all charges" before alternating pleas in English and Maori.
About half of the jury had been empanelled before the court took a lunch break at 1.15pm.
The trial proper is expected to begin on Monday afternoon with an opening address from the Crown.
About 100 supporters of the accused gathered outside the court building before the trial.
They
included Mana Party leader Hone Harawira and Green Party MP Catherine
Delahunty, who called on the Crown to drop the charges.
Police
arrested a number of people following a series of raids around the
country on October 15, 2007, alleging there were military-style training
camps in the Urewera mountain range in eastern Bay of Plenty.
The
warrants initially alleged crimes under the Terrorism Suppression Act
but the solicitor-general ruled out charges being laid, saying the law
was "almost impossible to apply in a coherent manner".
Eighteen
people were set to stand trial but one died and 13 who were facing
firearms charges only had them dropped in September 2011.
That
followed a Supreme Court ruling that unlawfully filmed footage could be
used against the four charged with membership of an organised criminal
group and not those facing firearms charges only.
NZN