WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand soldier, who admitted trying to spy for a foreign power, was sentenced to two years in military prison followed by discharge from the army.
The sentencing by a judge and a panel of three senior military officers Wednesday came two days after the man pleaded guilty to three charges, including attempted espionage. It was the first conviction for spying in New Zealand’s history.
The soldier’s name was suppressed, as was the name of the country he sought to pass secrets to.
Military court documents said the man believed he was engaged with a foreign agent in 2019 when he tried to communicate military information, including base telephone directories and maps, assessments of security weaknesses, his own identity card and log-in details for a military network. The wording of the charge said his actions were “likely to prejudice the security or defense of New Zealand.”
The soldier wasn’t speaking to a foreign agent, but rather an undercover New Zealand police officer collecting intelligence on alleged right-wing extremist groups, documents supplied by the military court showed.
Judge Kevin Riordan said the espionage attempts were unsophisticated, unlikely to cause harm and naive, but his actions were still serious.
“There is no such thing as a non-serious act of espionage,” Riordan said, according to Radio New Zealand. “There is no trivial act of espionage.”
The soldier came to the attention of law enforcement as part of an operation that was established after a March 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in the city of Christchurch, when an Australian white supremacist opened fire on Muslim worshipers, killing 51.
Officers spoke to the man twice about his involvement in a group, court documents showed, and after the government became aware he had expressed a desire to defect he was contacted by the undercover officer.
When the soldier’s hard drive was searched, investigators found a copy of Christchurch gunman Brenton Tarrant’s livestreamed video of his massacre and a manifesto document he published online before the killings. Possession of either without permission is a criminal offense in New Zealand and the soldier, who pleaded guilty to that charge as well, joins several others convicted in New Zealand of having or sharing banned material.
In a statement read to the court by his lawyer, the man said the two nationalist groups with which he was involved were “no more than groups of friends with similar points of view to my own,” according to RNZ. The lawyer, Steve Winter, added that his client denied supporting the Christchurch shooter’s ideology.
The soldier, who was based at Linton Military Camp near the city of Palmerston North, also pleaded guilty to accessing a military computer system for dishonest purposes. The amended suite of three charges replaced 17 counts levelled against him earlier in the proceedings.
New Zealand’s Army Chief Maj. Gen. Rose King said there was no place for people like the soldier in the country’s military.
“The actions of this individual were deplorable,” she said in a statement. “They were incredibly poorly judged and brought risk to all of those he served alongside, as well as the wider New Zealand public.”
The three charges carried maximum prison terms varying from seven to 10 years in New Zealand. He had been due to stand trial by court-martial before he admitted the offenses.
His was the first charge in a New Zealand military court for espionage or attempted spying. The last time such a case reached the civilian courts was in 1975, when a public servant was acquitted on charges alleging he had passed information to Russian agents.