Ryall demands answers on wanted criminal

National's Police spokesman Tony Ryall wants answers on how a wanted criminal could appear in a High Court case, and disappear again without anyone arresting him.

Chachi Khan Kingi failed to appear before the Parole Board for a home detention hearing in October and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

In December, he attended the High Court in Rotorua on matters relating to other charges, but no one in the Court was aware of the warrant.

"With this sort of slip-up, you'd think Basil Fawlty was running the justice system in this country," says Mr Ryall.

"New Zealanders have had a gutsful of a system that fails victims time and time again. Government Ministers should explain how this is happening and what they're doing about it.

"At this rate, the safest place for criminals will be the court house," he says. ] Mr Ryall says we need to learn from Australia which has a sophisticated criminal tracking system called CrimTrac where information is shared across the criminal justice system.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>