CTV Families Press Conference Statement
CTV Families Press Conference
Statement from Professor Maan Alkaisi,
on behalf of the CTV Families
Rydges
Latimer Hotel Christchurch
11 April
2018
Good
afternoon
Background following police decision
not to prosecute
Following the police's
decision, announced on the 30th November 2017, not to
prosecute anyone over the 2011 collapse of the CTV building
that took 115 lives, Justice Minister Andrew Little said, -
“those involved have walked away scot-free and
that's not right".
The following day’s Press
Editorial heading said it all - the “CTV failure
offends our sense of justice”, and when accountability is
called for, our justice system fails to do
so.
As I have previously stated, the decision
that no-one will be prosecuted, is simply offensive
and undermines the principles and the integrity of the New
Zealand justice system.
I must add that I have
not met, read or heard from any person who felt justice has
been served by this decision.
Following the announcement,
the families gathered not far from here and held a peaceful
protest on 10th December 2017.
We then met, on the 14th
December 2017, with representatives of the Police, Crown
Law, and the Christchurch Crown Solicitor, where we received
a briefing on the background to the decision and were
provided with an opportunity to ask questions.
I will
shortly explain the reason for calling today’s Press
Conference, but before doing so, I wish to comment on the
CTV Families meetings with the Hon Andrew Little - Minister
of Justice on the 17th December 2017 and with the Rt Hon
Jacinda Ardern Prime Minister on the 15th February
2018.
In all of these meetings we expressed our
dissatisfaction with the injustice and the way the families
were let down by government organisations.
Both the
Prime Minister and the Justice Minster showed great empathy
and did not defend the decision but made it clear that as
politicians they can’t and don’t interfere with the
police work, which we fully understand and appreciate.
We
informed the Justice Minister that following our meeting
with the Police (14 December 2018) that, in our view, based
on what was presented and the answers received to our
questions that:
Significant evidence and relevant
matters weren’t adequately considered and had they, [the
prosecution case] described as being 'finely balanced',
which we interpret as being 50-50, would have resulted with
a decision to prosecute being taken.
A similar
message was conveyed to the Prime Minister when we met her
in February and both she and the Justice Minister have
received correspondence from us to ensure the CTV Families
position was formally recorded.
Police meeting -
and why the Deputy Solicitor-General decision must be
reviewed!
The police initially decided to lay
criminal charges (115 manslaughter), against the two
engineers, Alan Reay and David Harding.
This conclusion
was reached after three years of investigation, which
involved 16 police officers to look into the criminal
offence and Engineering firm Beca, to conduct detailed
technical analysis and testing.
The police asked Beca
specifically whether there were “major departure” in the
design of the CTV building that amounted to gross negligence
as compared to normal practice at the day.
In the
conclusion of Beca’s 252 page report, it states
that:
1. Dr Reay, as the person who undertook to
design the building, omitted to discharge his duty to
allocate appropriately experienced personnel to the design,
checking and review process of the building
structure.
2. this omission was a
substantial and operating cause of the collapse;
and
3. the omission was a major
departure from the expected standard.
In
preparation for the Police meeting on the 14th December
2017, I prepared a list of questions in six pages that
focused on the four main criteria used by the Solicitor
General to change the police decision.
These
were:
• The one year one day limit
• Public
interest not met
• Financial implications runs into
millions; and
• No major departure from normal
practice.
However, during the meeting, the Deputy
Solicitor-General Brendon Horsley was fast to
downplay the obstacles of one year one day limits, public
interest not met and financial implications is very high and
claimed that the only important matter is to proof that
there was major departure from normal practice to warrant
manslaughter charges under “Evidential
sufficiency”.
I responded by explaining and giving
examples of the major departure in the design of the CTV
building that account in our opinion and many others for
gross negligence.
I then went on to list significant and
critical matters that were based on the Royal Commission
investigation (Vol 6, Nov 2012), the Department of Building
and Housing report (January 25, 2012 ) and finally Beca’s
technical report(July 2016).
According to a prominent
engineer who studied the building design thoroughly there
are more than 300 design deficiencies in the CTV building,
some of them code non complaint and are serious design
errors that led to the catastrophic collapse of the CTV
building. By catastrophic collapse I mean the failure of
multiple levels of a building because of deign
deficiencies.
Then there was the conclusion that came
after tens of specialist construction engineers, national
and international experts, the testing of beam column joints
at Auckland University, all confirmed that the building was
code non complaint and had numerous design deficiencies that
amount to major departure.
At the conclusion of
my challenging Mr. Horsely, it became very clear that in my
view and that of many other family members attending, that
the he had apparently ignored all these facts and evidences
and only considered irrelevant matters (police rebuttal
report 11 August 2017).
Furthermore, we were
left with the impression that the Deputy Solicitor-General
appeared to have assumed he was more knowledgeable than all
the engineering experts in the field.
To emphasis the
major departure issue, I said, Mr.Reay has a PhD in
Earthquake Engineering, he is fully aware of the danger of
earthquakes, yet he was presented with two opportunities to
rectify his design problems but did not take any
action.
The first opportunity for Reay to rectify the
design problems was in 1986 when Mr. Tapper, the city
council engineer provided Reay with a list of thirteen
problems in the building design including the connections
between the shear wall and floors that was one of the
reasons attributed to the collapse. Mr. Reay ignored them.
Then the second opportunity came when a report produced
by Holmes inspection in 1990 explicitly stating that the
building will collapse in case of earthquake. It took Reay
21 months to respond and install drag bars that were short,
not on all floors, code non complaint and where installed
without council permit, illegally. This is a clear evidence
that Mr.Reay is fully aware of the problems in the building
yet he did not take any action to make the building safe to
occupy
To our surprise and in front of all the families,
we observed that
Mr Horsley looked right to
Peter Read, and left to Mark Zarifeh, indicating that he did
not know about these factors and stated that they had not
told him about them. He said “this could be used to press
charges… for negligence…”.
The room
went silent and there was an overwhelming since of disbelief
that having heard Mr Horsley response, it appeared to us
that he was unaware of critical information, and accordingly
had not taken this into account before reaching his decision
to not prosecute.
I asked Mr Horsley and the other
members of the panel to go back to their offices and
reconsider the decision.
Since that meeting Mr
Horsley’s decision, as far as we are aware, remains
unchanged.
Formal
request made to Attorney General
This morning
the Hon David Parker, Attorney General, was sent a request
from the CTV Families setting out the justification and
basis that that the decision not to prosecute should be
reassessed by the Solicitor-General.
A copy of this request was also sent to the Rt Hon Jacinda Arden, Prime Minister and the Hon Andrew Little, Minister of Justice.
We have informed the Attorney General that we
found the explanations given for the decision unsatisfactory
and concerning.
We therefore have requested that he
invite the Solicitor-General to reconsider the decision not
to prosecute.
The
Attorney-General’s role
We think that in this
case, the public importance of the decision means it would
be appropriate for the Attorney-General to ensure that the
decision-making process was and is robust.
We pointed
out that we believe that it would be within the
Attorney-General’s powers and functions to invite the
Solicitor-General to review the decision, on the basis of
our concerns set out below.
Why the decision
needs to be re-visited?
In support of our
request to the Attorney-General we submitted an
affidavit and supporting affidavits setting out the
reasons why, following the 14th December meeting, we were
concerned about the decision not to prosecute.
We highlighted that our main concern is that
the Deputy Solicitor-General did not appear to be
aware of all of the relevant facts, and that the decision
makers were generally unable to convincingly defend their
decision.
We also pointed out that when we
explained why we believe there were major departures from
normal engineering practice in the design of the CTV
building, including the two opportunities to rectify the
design problems, the Deputy Solicitor-General
appeared to be surprised at this information and stated that
it could be used to press charges. We provided details of
these issues in the affidavits.
We have
informed the Attorney-General, that at this stage, the CTV
Families do not have confidence in the decision or the
decision-making process that was followed.
As the
decision is a matter of both national and international
public interest, we think it is essential that the decision
is cogent.
We acknowledge and welcome that the
Government is taking steps to repeal the ‘year and a
day’ law. But our understanding, from the reports released
by the Police to justify the prosecution decision is that
the year and a day rule was just one of a number of factors
relevant to the decision not to prosecute.
At the
meeting with families, the Deputy Solicitor-General
indicated that it was not the main obstacle to a
prosecution. As such, the proposed law change does not
remove the concerns we have about the decision making
process in this case.
A review by the
Solicitor-General
We think that the decision
should be reassessed by the Solicitor-General. We understand
that the work on the decision was largely undertaken by the
Deputy Solicitor-General and other parties, rather than the
Solicitor-General.
A review
should consider:
• whether or not the decision
not to prosecute was based on all relevant information
required to make a fully informed determination on all of
the facts;
• whether all of the relevant factors were
adequately considered to ensure that the decision not to
prosecute was appropriately decided in accordance with the
Solicitor-General’s Prosecution Guidelines;
• whether or not the decision not to prosecute may
have taken into account any irrelevant
information/considerations; and
• whether, in all the
circumstances, the correct decision was made in relation to
prosecution.
In the circumstances, given the importance
of the decision, we suggest to the Attorney-General that it
would be appropriate for the peer review process to have the
advantage of access to a Queen’s Counsel with substantial
criminal law experience
Summary
We
maintain that the CTV case is justified and must go to trial
to ensure just judgment without external
interferences.
It is worth mentioning that the hundreds
of millions wasted on doggy EQ repair and the use of
non-code complaint steel, are only few examples of the
importance of sending strong message to the construction
industry that human lives are valuable, and substandard
building practices are not acceptable.
Time Up
injustice, send the CTV case to court, the 115 lives deserve
meaningful action from the Government.
The government
can’t act as spectator on such an important national and
international matter.
“You may choose to look
the other way but you can never say again that you did not
know.” William Wilberforce
We ask for justice
and accountability and will never give up until justice is
done.