Secrecy over passport case confounds woman

A woman challenging the cancelling of her New Zealand passport, apparently on security grounds, wants to know more about why it was done.

The woman, whose name is suppressed in the meantime, had her passport cancelled in May 2016 by the minister of Internal Affairs, when she was living outside of New Zealand.

Her case to challenge the cancellation first came before the High Court in Wellington in April 2017.

She represented herself via a telephone link to the latest court hearing yesterday, wanting to know more about the information being used against her.

An earlier court decision referred to her passport being cancelled on the grounds that it would impede her ability to facilitate actions of the type that made her a danger to the security of a country other than New Zealand.

Since then several decisions have been issued on the way the case would proceed and how classified security information could be handled and taken into account.

She has been excluded from most of the process. Instead, a ‘‘special advocate’’, lawyer Ben Keith, was appointed to look at the security information and put forward arguments that might help the woman’s case.

The judge has yet to come to a final view about how much of the classified security information it was desirable to protect.

Much of the argument seems to have centred on how much the woman can know of the allegations made against her.

To the extent the grounds for cancelling her passport relied on classified security information, the court received the information but the woman would not be able to see that, the judge has ruled.

Instead, the Crown was to give her a summary of the security information, that the judge said should ‘‘to the greatest extent possible’’ convey the gist of the case against her so she could prepare a rebuttal.

Two hearings took place about her case at the High Court in Wellington yesterday. The first was ‘‘closed’’ court in a belowground courtroom with the woman excluded but then a second session took place in another courtroom with her via a phone conference. Another closed court hearing is planned for next week.