And then there were four. Another chapter in the now infamous "Urewera terror raids" has closed with the Crown on Monday withdrawing charges against 11 of the 15 remaining defendants.
What started as police operations focused on the remote Urewera Range in 2007 has turned into farce.
After year-long surveillance of Maori and environmental activists and the dramatic and traumatic raids, this is what it has come to - four people charged with possession of illegal firearms and participation in a criminal group.
Police had originally charged 17, one of whom has died in the meantime, and prosecutions were originally sought under terrorist suppression legislation.
Whatever the outcome of the trial next February, assuming it goes ahead, the whole affair is a sorry look for the police and the justice system.
The Crown Solicitor says the withdrawing of charges against 11 people was prompted by a Supreme Court decision.
While details of that ruling are suppressed, the Crown Solicitor said that it would have meant the trial for the 11 on firearms charges alone would have had to follow the trial of the other four, making the delays excessive.
The 11 had spent time in custody after the arrests and had been living under restrictive bail conditions and it was not "in the public interest" to pursue those cases.
It would also seem the Supreme Court has decided crucial evidence cannot be allowed to be heard in court. This has led, naturally, to the understanding that information gathered by surveillance and eavesdropping has been ruled inadmissible.
Given the police monitored suspects for a year it would seem likely surveillance evidence was an important part of the prosecution.
Frustratingly, the suppression orders leave an information vacuum which is filled by speculation, not all of it helpful. The Crown has said it would like more information to be in the public arena, as has a lawyer for one of the accused.
If the court can clear the way for more information to be released it could help clear just a little of the murky air.
From the outside, it seems possible the police became wrapped up in anti-terrorist fervour and self-justification and went too far.
They spent a year and many hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting Maori nationalists, environmentalists and peace activists and turned what might have been wild talk about violence and assassinations into major conspiracies.
The sceptre of remote guerrilla-training camps was raised and that was enough, in a post 9/11 world, to frighten New Zealanders. But who would know what was actually going on? Somehow, senior police and officers on the ground came to believe certain people were a terrorist threat.
Perhaps - if they were right - the fault was partly in the Terrorist Suppression Act. Such laws have proved difficult to apply throughout the world, and New Zealand is no exception.
The Solicitor-general said not long after the raids the law was "unnecessarily complex, incoherent and almost impossible to apply" domestically. In any event, the Crown seems to have now focused its remaining charges on those it believes are central to the matter.
There were some standard reasons for the excessive trial delays, notably because of appeals about whether trials should be held together or separately and about whether they would be heard by a judge alone or - as the defendants wanted and were yesterday by the Supreme Court granted - by a jury.
But all these various appeals in themselves take too long. Justice delayed is justice denied for both the accused and the Crown. Our court system lumbers along like an elderly elephant. It is not just police who come out of this affair poorly, but the justice system.
The matter has not served race relations well either. First, it was the long-suffering Tuhoe tribe at the centre of the raids and, second, the raids have been seen as reflecting underlying racism.
That could be unfair. If police genuinely believed radicals were a threat, then they had to act.
The so-called "Urewera terror raids" now head towards the trial next February. Interest will, and should, be intense. There are so many doubts and unanswered questions it must be hoped the trial sheds at least some light on what went on all that time ago.
