French agent apologizes for Rainbow Warrior bombing
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A retired French secret service agent has apologized for planting the bombs that sank a Greenpeace ship 30 years ago, killing a photographer and causing an international incident that tarnished the image of France.
Jean-Luc Kister told Television New Zealand Sunday he and his colleagues never meant to kill anybody when they attached two bombs to the Rainbow Warrior on July 10, 1985, while the boat was moored in Auckland.
The boat was to travel to French Polynesia to protest French nuclear testing. The bombing killed Fernando Pereira, 35, a Portuguese-born photographer, who drowned.
Kister said their intention was only to sink the boat and the death has plagued his conscience ever since.
The operation was a “big, big failure. … We were not coldblooded killers,” he said.
“We did everything to preserve life of the people on board of the Rainbow Warrior.”
He said he was surprised when he was ordered to bomb the Greenpeace boat, an organization he considered to be made up of troublemakers, but not very dangerous.
“For us, it was just like using boxing gloves in order to crush a mosquito,” he said.
His handlers told him Greenpeace had been infiltrated by Russian KGB agents.
Kister, who was an agent with France’s Direction generale de la securite exterieure, said he was the diver who attached the bombs to the ship’s hull.
He directed his apology to the photographer’s daughter, Marelle Pereira.
“I would like to take this opportunity … to express my deepest regrets,” he said.
“I want to apologize to the people of New Zealand for the unfair, clandestine operation, conducted on an ally, a friendly and peaceful country.”
Bunny McDiarmid, Greenpeace New Zealand’s executive director, said it is good to hear the apology, but she believes the French agents acted recklessly.
“I think it’s nice that someone from that murderous fiasco apologies, and recognizes what they did was illegal and immoral,” she said. “But the apology is so conditioned. Does he expect people to believe they didn’t mean to hurt anybody?”
The incident has remained a source of tension between France and New Zealand. French agents Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart were caught after the bombing and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. But both were repatriated to France within three years, a move that upset many New Zealanders who believed their government had capitulated to French pressure.