Urewera group was ‘training to kill’

Jamie Lockett, Omar Hamed, Watene Mcclutchie, Trudi Paraha, Marama Mayrick and Iti’s nephew Rawiri Iti, were also all in the video, all either wearing balaclavas or carrying weapons.

Mr Burns said police discovered a recipe for making a ‘‘thermite bomb’’ – so violent it could melt metal.

He said though the group might argue it was legal to use the firearms, there could be ‘‘no excuse’’ for using molotov cocktails.

The camps were just part of the picture, Mr Burns said, with intercepted chat-room logs showing the members speaking of creating ‘‘cells’’ in the cities. One communication from Tuhoe Lambert to his brother Kevin asked if he had any friends ‘‘ready to give their lives for Tuhoe’’.

Kevin allegedly replied: ‘‘Got two mates. Dumb as f.... Do anything for me. Can drive trucks, fly planes; got kids too.’’

Tuhoe Lambert: ‘‘Cheers The dumber the better.’’

Burns said Tuhoe Lambert knew what he was doing, having been on two tours of Vietnam.

‘‘He wasn’t playing games. He was a grown man who knew what he was talking about. And what he was talking about was recruiting people to join cells in the city who would be willing to give their lives.’’

Mr Burns said a communication from Tame Iti showed he had two plans. Plan A was to use diplomacy but, if that failed, then they would use Plan B – achieving their aims ‘‘at the point of a gun’’.

Signer and Bailey organised the Wellington participants, and Kemara was the armourer, sup-

cuz. plying the other members of the camps with arms, Mr Burns said.

Kemara had had a valid firearms licence, and police had footage of him loading up his truck with firearms to take to the camps, Mr Burns said.

When his house was searched during the police raids, they found literature about revolutions and seizing control.

One pamphlet gave instructions about blowing up communications systems as a revolutionary technique.

Mr Burns said police had intercepted internet chat-room conversations between Kemara and an Auckland woman.

He said Kemara said to her: ‘‘No-one wants to kill. We’re training to kill because we’ll probably have to.’’

Defence lawyers gave brief opening addresses and urged the jury to keep an open mind.

Christopher Stevenson, for Signer, said Signer was out of New Zealand during about a third of the time that the training camps were allegedly held.

He asked whether they were really a cohesive group and whether they were really training camps, or just wananga, devoted to teaching and learning.

Iti’s lawyer, Russell Fairbrother, said there was a ‘‘confiscation line’’ near Ruatoki, where many Tuhoe people were pushed off their land in 1866. When police raided the alleged Urewera training camps, they were dressed in black, looked anonymous, and were armed ‘‘head to toe with guns’’, right on the confiscation line. ‘‘You may think that’s a metaphor for the land in which Mr Tame Iti works, lives and expresses himself.’’