 Falling of a Warrior
flashed before me immediately. A few
Twenty years ago this week Rainbow Warrior
was sunk by French agents in Auckland harbor.
Paul Brown, who had sailed with
Greenpeace flagship just days earlier, recalls
the worldwide shock at a callous act of state-
sponsored terrorism - and asks why so many
questions remain unanswered.
Paul Brown
The Guardian, Friday 15 July 2005
Driving past Hampstead Heath pond to
chase an interview the car radio was
tuned in to the 2pm news. All was as it
should be for any news reporter just
back from a foreign assignment and
keeping up with events. The first item,
tagged "news just in", made me listen a
bit more closely. The shock of the
words that followed made me swerve,
then swing the car round in a U-turn,
and head straight back to the office.
The report said, "Greenpeace
environment group's flagship
Rainbow Warrior has been sunk in
Auckland, New Zealand following
explosions. Early reports say crew
members are missing but there are no
more details."
The faces of those crew members
days before, 12,000 miles away, I had
the been laughing, drinking with and
hugging this crew of eight nationalities
as I left the ship after a month's hard
labor and fun. My cabin partner had
been Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese
photographer. We had some good times
together; I had attended his 35th
birthday party on board just before I
left.
The 11 crew had taken on Greenpeace's
most ambitious campaign in its history,
moving a contaminated people to a
safe haven. The Americans, whose 1956
Bravo bomb had covered the people of
Rongelap island in radiation, had
removed all the population's thyroid
glands to prevent cancer killing them
and were using them as guinea pigs to
see what further effect continued
radiation had on their health. An
the increasing proportion of children were
being born deformed. The island's
elders appealed to Greenpeace for
help, and I had signed on as a deckhand
for a month to report the evacuation
for the Guardian.
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The next stage of the trip was for the
Rainbow Warrior to sail to Auckland for
supplies and then head a peace flotilla
into the French nuclear test zone at
Mururoa in the South Pacific. The
Greenpeace crew, having seen the
long-term effects of previous nuclear
testing on innocent bystanders, was
determined to do its best to disrupt the
French program.
In the shock of the news of the sinking
all these memories and thoughts
swirled through my mind. My job was to
write the story, the facts as known, but
there were not too many of those. This
was July 11 1985, before mobile
phones. New Zealand was still a long
way away. In Auckland it was the
middle of the night and every
telephone line to Greenpeace's New
Zealand office was jammed.
But by first edition I was able to report
that all members of the crew had been
accounted for but one - the body of
Fernando Pereira had been found by
navy frogmen. He had been trapped in
his cabin by a second explosion as he
went to retrieve his precious cameras.
The headline assigned to my piece was
the first inkling of a longer-running and
more disturbing story. It said:
"Saboteurs sink Greenpeace campaign
ship." At first the Auckland police were
not sure what had caused the
explosions. To them, sabotage seemed
"the most likely explanation", but in an
old ship with what they regarded as a
bunch of amateur crew members,
accident or stupidity were just as
plausible.
Davey Edwards, the Rainbow Warrior's
Yorkshire-born chief engineer, also had
doubts "I was desperate for the first 24
hours because I thought it must be my
fault. The explosion had come from the
engine room, my responsibility. I kept
racking my brains about what could
have caused it, there were banks of
batteries that could have caused a
spark but nothing explosive."
But the following day an inspection of
the hull by divers meant that an
accident could be ruled out. The very
substantial riveted plates of the
converted Aberdeen-built trawler had
had huge holes torn in them, but the
jagged pieces of metal that remained
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were all bent inwards. The divers said
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limpet mines had been attached to the
outside of the hull.
"It may sound strange but when we
were told the explosion had come from
outside, it was sabotage, or terrorism,
it came as a relief," said Edwards.
It is hard to understand now that what
came as a relief to Edwards came as an
extraordinary shock to the rest of the
world, and particularly New Zealand,
which had never seen a bomb explode
in anger on its territory, let alone an
act of terrorism. Neither has there
been one since, the event remaining
deeply scored on the nation's psyche.
The puzzle for the police was who
could be responsible for this murderous
act against a peace group, their whole
ethos based on the Quaker principle of
non-violent direct action, of bearing
witness to moral wrongs.
In my mind, and for the crew, suspicion
naturally fell on someone French; after
all, they were next in line for a
protest. They also had a long history of
violence against Greenpeace, albeit
confined to boarding vessels, using tear
gas and beating crew members with
truncheons. Yet an act of terrorism by
the French state on the soil of a
friendly power, clearly designed to kill,
was still unthinkable.
Twenty years on it seems just as
strange. State terrorism is something
the United States and the United
Kingdom are prepared to go to war
over. It is something carried out by
rogue states, members of the "Axis of
Evil". Members of the European Union
somehow do not fit the description.
But by day two of the Rainbow Warrior
inquiry Auckland police were looking
for French people. One had visited the
ship hours before the explosion when,
during an open day for the Auckland
public, one unknown Frenchman had
spent time looking round the crew
quarters.
Within hours information was flooding
into the police from all over the North
Island of events involving French
nationals, sightings of yachts, strange
landings of equipment, movements of
camper vans and rendezvous in obscure
places. In a country where the
population is tiny, strangers a curiosity,
and French tourists rare, the sighting of
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so many French people seemed a the men were picked up and returned
remarkable coincidence. to France in a nuclear submarine.

Five days later a French "honeymoon" In the time leading up to the trial of
couple, Alain Jacques Turenge and his the two agents in custody French
wife Sophie Turenge, were arrested. journalists continued to press President
Inquiries revealed they were French Mitterand for who had sanctioned the
secret agents Major Alain Mafart, aged operation. On August 27 he issued a
35, and Captain Dominique Prieur, aged report which fully exonerated the
36. They were first charged with French secret service. It was not
passport offences then arson and credible, and when a request by New
murder. Zealand for the extradition of the crew
of the Ouvea was refused it was clear
The information pouring in from all
this was a cover-up at top level.
over New Zealand, the Pacific and even
England built up a picture of an By September 22 the game was up.
extensive French secret service Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admitted
operation to cripple the Rainbow that the French secret service had
Warrior. But it was too late to catch ordered the attack on the Rainbow
the perpetrators. Even though Warrior and the French defense
detectives interviewed four Frenchmen minister Charles Hernu, a close ally and
in the Australian territory of Norfolk friend of Mitterrand, resigned,
Island after the attack they had not got accepting responsibility and saying the
enough evidence to hold them and the president was not involved. We know
Australian government insisted the New now that this was not the full truth
Zealanders leave. either: a recent confession by the
former head of the Secret Service
These four agents disappeared on a
claims that Mitterand did, in fact,
yacht which was never seen again. The
sanction the attack after all.
official police report says officers
believe the Ouvea was scuttled when Astonishingly no government outside
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New Zealand condemned the French

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action, least of all Britain, despite the sunk again as a reef for sea life. The
fact it was a British vessel. organization used the money paid in
compensation to launch the new
The role and attitude of the French
Rainbow Warrior, a flagship larger,
state remains murky. Marfart and
better equipped, and because of the
Prieur, who clearly did not plant the
French action, recognized worldwide.
bombs themselves, had their charges
What happened in Auckland made
reduced to manslaughter and were
Greenpeace a multinational in its own
sentenced to 10 years. The French
right.
government was horrified and leaned
heavily on New Zealand, even The new Rainbow Warrior went back,
threatening trade sanctions, and and back again to Mururoa, and in 1996
barring lamb imports to the European was again the subject of an attack by
Union. Within three years the UN had the French military when it was
brokered a deal between the two boarded, the crew tear-gassed and
countries. The French would formally equipment smashed. This time, as a
apologize, and pay $13m in journalist covering the event, I was
compensation to the New Zealand arrested on the high seas, briefly
government. They also paid a further imprisoned and interrogated on
$8m to Greenpeace, which was already Mururoa itself while the tests
suing them in the Paris courts for continued. The worldwide protests
compensation. finally led to the French abandoning
nuclear testing in the Pacific.
As part of the deal the convicted
agents were transferred to French This year I travelled to New Zealand for
territory to complete their sentences. an anniversary party. It was clear that
Within months they were freed to a among the celebrations of meeting old
heroes' welcome in Paris. friends and happy past times there was
still some anger. Edwards, who now
Greenpeace could not repair the
runs a fish restaurant in the Bay of
original Rainbow Warrior and it was
Islands, which ironically was once a
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towed out to sea off North Island to be

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meeting place for the four French

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frogmen, summed up his current view:
"The response, or rather non response,
of the British government was a
disgrace. Up to that moment I had
always been proud to be British, but
this was a British flagged vessel with a
British citizen in desperate need of
help and I heard nothing. Everything I
had was sunk with the Warrior, but
there was no offer of help, not even a
new passport."

The Guardian applied in April under the

Freedom of Information Act to try and
find out what the British government
knew about the attack and when, to
perhaps give a clue as to why in 1985
state terrorism against British ships was
acceptable. So far Downing Street has
refused to answer although the Foreign
Office has said it will do so soon.

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