A Wellington jury has been told three antiwar activists broke into a secure Government spy base near Blenheim last April and slashed holes in the inflatable cover of a satellite dish, in order to save lives.
In the Wellington District Court yesterday, Adrian Leason, Peter Murnane and Sam Land faced two charges of committing wilful damage, by cutting a fence and slashing the dome, and a third of burglary, by being in the yard belonging to the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in the Waihopai Valley.
The accused admitted the damage, but said they were acting to save the lives of people overseas.
Michael Knowles, defending Leason, said a "Faustian pact" between the intelligence agency and the Government cloaked the base's activities from public accountability in democratic society.
"The Government doesn't ask and the GCSB doesn't tell," he told the jury.
The case was a meeting of the law, morality and humanity, with the accused defending those unable to defend themselves, he said.
During his opening address, Murnane, a Dominican priest who represented himself, said the base gathered signals intelligence used by United States and British military to commit acts of genocide, torture and use weapons of mass destruction - in this case, depleted uranium - on civilian populations.
When interviewed at the Blenheim police station by Michael Lawson, a CIB detective at the time of the incident, Land readily spoke about his part in the action.
Throughout the interview, the arrested man drew attention to the symbolically-charged and peaceful nature of the act, Mr Lawson said.
When the group was discovered shortly after 6am, they were gathered around a shrine they had erected near one of the domes and were having what appeared to be a candle-lit prayer meeting, a GCSB employee said.
When she asked for the key to a lock they put on the gate, Land gave it to her, she said.
The trial is set down for eight days.
