FAR-RIGHT SOLDIER Facts and secrets
A soldier with far-Right ties was arrested for breaching national security. But there’s much the Defence Force won’t say. Florence Kerr and Thomas Manch investigate.
For years the soldier travelled on white nationalist internet forums, praising Hitler and recording podcasts about fostering fascism in New Zealand.
Maybe it went unnoticed. Maybe it was of little concern at the time.
But this changed after the March 15 terror attack, when the same far-Right ideology motivated the murder of 51 Muslim worshippers in two Christchurch mosques.
Eight months after the attack, police officers closed in on a small, mint-coloured weatherboard home in a housing area outside the Linton Military Camp – and arrested a 27-yearold soldier.
Two months later, the soldier faces the military court, a powerful and opaque justice system which has hidden him and his alleged crime from public view.
He has been charged with accessing a computer system for a dishonest purpose and for disclosing information that prejudiced the security or defence of New Zealand. It is not known who he supplied the information to.
The second charge – posing a threat to New Zealand’s security – has serious implications. Stuff has revealed the soldier was well networked in far-Right circles, which in our globalised world span continents. The soldier’s own nationalist group claimed to have met its cohorts in Australia.
Yet important questions have so far gone unanswered. What information did the soldier allegedly access? Who was it shared with, and why? How was he able to access such information, while acting as a voice for a white nationalist group online?
Here’s what we know.
Far-Right connection uncovered
The attacks on both the Al Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch were well planned.
The 28-year-old Australian accused, who now awaits trial on 51 counts of murder, had for years engaged with the ‘‘identitarian’’ brand of far-Right nationalism online, travelled to countries with history that fed his ideology, and donated money to nationalist groups.
In New Zealand, a group that had been plastering similar nationalist messages around Auckland and Wellington responded quickly to the attack. The Dominion Movement wiped itself off the internet, taking down its website.
But a network of anti-fascist activists, galvanised by the attack, had been watching the group for some time. The soldier was one of its leaders.
Stuff has seen images showing the soldier attending a ‘‘free speech’’ rally at Parliament in July 2018, with a small group that includes one well-known white nationalist.
A trail of online accounts and postings, linked to the soldier’s name and known aliases, shows he was seeking to connect with other white nationalists as early as 2011 on the neo-Nazi internet forum ‘‘Stormfront’’.
He has also been revealed by Stuff to be behind the online pseudonym Johann Wolfe.
Under this alias he released a series of podcasts, no longer found online.
He was also interviewed by the Australian alt-Right podcast station The Convict Report, produced by white nationalist group The Dingoes – which also shut down after March 15.
‘‘We focus on the positives rather than the negatives: the love of our own culture and our own heritage, instead of what we hate about other races – which is an easy trap to fall into,’’ he said on the podcast.
He openly shared derisive views about Ma¯ ori, described himself as the co-founder of the Dominion Movement, and discussed recruiting other young men into the outfit – but did not mention his employment as a soldier.
The connection was exposed after his arrest, when a far-Right Christian group based in
Palmerston North, Wargus Christi, asked for prayers for one of its ‘‘boys’’ being detained in military custody.
On December 18, the Defence Force confirmed a soldier had been arrested by police and was in military custody.
The soldier
The man, who has name suppression, had come under the microscope months before his arrest, Stuff understands. He had been questioned by police after the March 15 terror attacks – why is unclear.
The 27-year-old was born and raised in Waikato. He has two siblings.
He was recruited by the Defence Force five years ago, and has held two roles in the army. He remains employed, but his job title has been suppressed.
A source close to the family has said the beginnings of his far-Right views were evident in his teens, but the depth of his beliefs was apparent only after his arrest. His family has no association with far-Right groups.
In the podcast, he describes his entry into far-Right ideology, saying he found solace in online humour after feeling ‘‘beaten over the head’’ for being white.
Ironic humour in online forums, including racist jokes and antisemitic conspiracy, is broadly considered to be a starting point for young white men who become radical supporters of white nationalism.
Despite the seriousness of the allegations he faces, the soldier has continued to engage in white nationalist rhetoric online.
Last month Stuff revealed that a Twitter account credibly linked to the soldier was activated on December 31, 2019, two weeks after his arrest.
For more than a month the person behind the account posted racist, homophobic, and antisemitic comments, including references to a ‘‘white genocide’’ conspiracy theory.
‘‘Even if we are to witness the end of our people, at least we had the privilege of being a part of this amazing journey our people set out on so many thousands of years ago,’’ the account posted.
The account also describes being arrested and detained for having ‘‘IRL’’ (in real life) altRight friends, and for committing a ‘‘thought crime’’.
The Defence Force has refused to answer questions about the man’s open-arrest conditions and whether he is permitted internet access.
The soldier – who a source says was headed to Russia for Christmas before he was
detained – is being held on open arrest at his home outside the wire of Linton Military Camp, awaiting a court martial.
The Manual of Armed Forces Law specifies open arrest as involving ‘‘such restraint as may be necessary to ensure a continued presence . . . The member is to attend such parades or musters as may be required. The member is not to consume alcohol. He or she may perform his or her normal duties’’.
Wellington barrister Christopher Griggs told Stuff that the soldier being on ‘‘open arrest’’, and not in jail, did not lessen the severity of the allegations he faced.
‘‘For a member of the armed forces to use information that they’ve been given in confidence to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand, that’s a big deal,’’ he said.
Griggs, who has two decades of experience in the military court but no involvement in the case, said the soldier could possibly have access to weapons, and to army publications that could include tactics, techniques, procedures, and plans for major national events.
‘‘If you have [a group] like the Dominion Movement . . . they might think it’s kind of handy to get their hands on information which shows them how the New Zealand Defence Force conducts operations because they might want to use those sorts of things themselves,’’ he said.
‘‘There’s a whole load of information which an organisation that is intent on the use of violence to achieve its ends might find useful.’’
Checks and balances
There is no indication the soldier was considered a high risk to the public, but how he was first noticed by authorities remains unknown.
Stuff has revealed that detectives have been gathering information on his background and connections to the far Right, telling family and his close associates they are investigating on behalf of the Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG).
CTAG is a multi-agency group, led by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and including the Defence Force and police. It is responsible for assessing terrorism threats to New Zealand and its interests.
All three agencies remain tight-lipped about the case.
Speaking to reporters at Parliament this month, SIS director Rebecca Kitteridge would not comment on the arrest of the soldier, or her agency’s involvement. Similarly, she would not be drawn on whether any planned terror attacks had been intercepted by security agencies.
‘‘I won’t comment on any specific issues involving individuals,’’ she said. ‘‘If we were ever to see specific attack planning, we would be working with police immediately to disrupt that.’’
But she broadly described how the SIS had investigated hundreds of leads on people who posed concerns after the March 15 terror attacks.
Some 30 to 50 people were being investigated by the agency at any one time, she said, and only a small number were deemed of high or medium risk, requiring further investigation.
The spy agencies were criticised after March 15 for a claimed failure to consider the risk of far-Right extremism. Kitteridge has said the agencies cannot monitor the whole internet, but it does appear that groups such as the Dominion Movement have become a focus for her agency.
‘‘There are some people in New Zealand who have got really extremist views . . . It isn’t one specific group or anything like that, but there are particular ideologies – you could describe it as identitarianism – there are neo-Nazis,’’ she said at Parliament recently.
‘‘They’re not all one group and they tend to live online and they tend to live in encrypted chatrooms. So very, very challenging for law enforcement and intelligence agencies.’’
The soldier had for years been inhabiting white nationalist circles online. Within weeks of his arrest, activists and journalists were able to build a detailed picture of the kind of material the SIS would describe as a ‘‘lead’’.
But was anything missed when he was recruited into the army? The Defence Force, citing the ongoing prosecution, has declined to answer questions about the vetting of the soldier, or how it inspects recruits for extremist ideology.
A written statement from a spokeswoman said all the organisation’s staff must hold a national security clearance, which means all are vetted by the SIS. The vetting guidelines allow the SIS to dig into the employee’s life, and all available information is considered.
External loyalties, influence and associations are inspected, along with personal relationships, a person’s finances, alcohol and drug use, mental health and criminal history.
‘‘Of particular note is the requirement that ‘the candidate possesses and demonstrates an appropriate level of integrity, that is, a soundness of character and moral principle’,’’ the spokeswoman said.
While the soldier and authorities build their case, the public will have to wait and see whether the answers to these questions will be revealed.