Fight for ‘justice’ on CTV ‘not over’
‘‘I am not giving up until we get justice.’’
Christchurch engineer Maan Alkaisi is adamant. He will not rest until someone is held responsible for the collapse of the CTV building during the Christchurch earthquake on February 22, 2011.
The engineering lecturer at Canterbury University lost his wife, Maysoon Abbas, a doctor, in the collapse.
‘‘We are going to organise protests to show that we don’t accept the decision,’’ Alkaisi said of the police decision not to prosecute over the building’s failure.
‘‘We know all the failures and who was responsible, so the decision is unfair and justice has not been done. I don’t think anybody involved in this decision can be proud of it,’’ he said.
He and other families of CTV victims would also seek legal advice on whether the decision could be challenged and talk to new Justice Minister Andrew Little.
‘‘I’m frustrated because this is a huge decision. Something we have been waiting for for seven years and then somebody who hasn’t been involved from the beginning makes a very conservative decision.’’
He noted that Christchurch’s Crown solicitor, Mark Zarifeh, who wanted to press charges, was one of the three lawyers helping the Royal Commission investigating the collapse.
The serious deficiencies highlighted were clear and specific, he said. ‘‘What else did they have to do to get prosecuted?’’
In other responses, Nakai Kazuhiro, deputy chief of the Japanese embassy in Wellington, said the decision not to prosecute was ‘‘regretful’’. ‘‘We have conveyed to the New Zealand Government that the Japanese families of victims of the building’s collapse are keenly concerned about how legal responsibility is going to be pursued in this case.’’
Police announced on Thursday they would not pursue a prosecution of Alan Reay, the principal of the company that designed the building, and David Harding, the engineer who carried out the work, saying their case was not strong enough to get a conviction.
Nigel Hampton QC, who represented families in other court hearings on the tragedy, said the decision was open to judicial review in the High Court. The court could instruct police to review their decision.
Hampton likened the situation to the Pike River case, where the Supreme Court recently ruled WorkSafe was wrong to drop charges against mine boss Peter Whittall as long as he paid $3.41 million to the two survivors and families of men who died. ‘‘Such a review [for CTV] I’m sure would focus on two things,’’ Hampton said. ‘‘One, the views formed by police and local Crown solicitor that there was evidential sufficiency and [two] the public interest . . . which seems to have not played a significant enough role in the decision . . .’’
Hampton has criticised the decision not to prosecute, labelling it ‘‘timid’’ and ‘‘weak’’. Yesterday, he went further, arguing that existing law was robust and Crown Law interpretation of one aspect of it ‘‘bulls...’’. Calls for law change, such as the introduction of a corporate manslaughter charge, were unfounded, he said, as the threshold for a prosecution case would be the same. ‘‘You’d still be facing the evidential and public policy considerations that they faced in looking at the individual charges.
‘‘All that corporate manslaughter meant was instead of just considering charges against Reay and Harding, the police could have also considered charges against the Reay company.’’