Police dressed in running shorts and posing as joggers ran through the bush in the Urewera Ranges near Ruatoki where they believed a military-style training camp had been held and found molotov cocktails, a court has been told.
Tame Wairere Iti, Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara, Emily Felicity Bailey and Urs Signer are on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of belonging to a criminal organisation and possessing guns and molotov cocktails.
The Crown says they had an objective to commit murder, arson and use guns against the police.
They have all pleaded not guilty.
A member of the police Special Tactics Group, who has name suppression, said he and other group members found an old stove that had been used for target practice.
He said the stove had been shot at by .22, .223, .762 firearms and a shotgun.
The officer said he also saw what appeared to be a figure of a man drawn on to the side of the stove.
"There were a number of bottles we located adjacent to the oven. They appeared to have remnants of left-over accelerant in them as opposed to drink.''
Crown prosecutor Ross Burns asked the officer if police had conducted a "taste test''. The officer replied: "No we were reluctant to do that.''
Under cross examination from Kemara's lawyer Jeremy Bioletti, the officer confirmed that there seemed to be a rubbish dump about 150 metres from the stove target.
Mr Bioletti asked if the stove could have been shot at in a different location and later dumped there.
The officer replied: "It is a possibility. We drew the conclusion that it wasn't due to the number of shells in the area but it is possible.''
The court also heard from two teenagers who were blindfolded, pulled out of their car and ordered to lie down on a bush track as three shots were fired.
The two brothers, who have name suppression, told the court that they knew a man who ran a gym and agreed to drive with him to meet Iti in Ruatoki.
"I thought we were just going down there to train some Maori youths to get a better life,'' said the older brother, who was 16 at the time.
He said Iti gave them cloths and told them to put them over their face to protect their identities and to cover their eyes with blindfolds.
The group then drove into the bush with Iti at the wheel.
"We were stopped at a set-up road block. There was a log across the road and a man holding a gun and a stick ... He fired some shots into the air and asked us to get out of the car.''
The man said about 10 or 11 people were around the car and he saw that four of them had guns.
"They told us to lie on the ground facedown while they patted us down.''
He was asked by Crown prosecutor Ross Burns how he felt about that.
"I didn't really think that much,'' the man told the court, "I was just in shock.''
He said afterwards they walked up a bush track to a makeshift campsite where there was a discussion about nutrition.
"We did some demonstrations like kicking and punching and stuff.''
He said that on the way back to Ruatoki there was a discussion in the car.
"Mr Iti claimed it was [for] training troops for battle, urban warfare and stuff like that.''
Under cross-examination from Iti's lawyer, Russell Fairbrother, the man said Iti did not wear a mask and was also ordered out of the car and patted down.
He said the group apologised for the ambush.
The trial continues.
