on appeal and received a four-year suspended sentence. While still under a Belgian home detention order which limited his movements to the street he lived on, he travelled illegally to Switzerland. The Swiss authorities refused his request for asylum due to his ongoing political activities, and made a deal with Burkina Faso to deport Zaoui and his family there, while still providing Zaoui with a 1500 Swiss franc monthly allowance. 2000–2002: Travel to Asia then New Zealand Zaoui left Burkina Faso and travelled to Malaysia with his family in 2000. He engaged in political activity with the FIS in exile. In 2001 France convicted him in absentia for "participation in a criminal group with a view to preparing terrorist acts". During his time in Malaysia, the head of the Algerian police services visited to observe Malaysian policing methods. Zaoui believed that this was a pretext, that the real reason was his presence in Malaysia, and that the Malaysian authorities were preparing to detain him. He decided to leave Malaysia, and on 2 December 2002 he arrived in New Zealand via Vietnam on a fake South African passport. Imprisonment in New Zealand En route to New Zealand, Zaoui attempted to destroy his fake South African passport, and upon arrival, applied for refugee status. Although his identity was initially secret, his name was illegally leaked to the media, and he became the subject of political debate and media scrutiny. His initial application for refugee status to the Refugee Status Branch (RSB) of the New Zealand Immigration Service was declined. Although he was recognised as having a well founded fear of persecution, he was excluded as the RSB held there was reason to believe he had committed serious criminal or terrorist activities, primarily on evidence given by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and on his conviction in Belgium. The SIS issued a security risk certificate in March 2003. Mr Zaoui then requested a review of the certificate. While not made public at the time, in February 2004 the High Court ordered the SIS to release the summary of its allegations to Zaoui's lawyers, who then released it to the media. The summary excluded classified information which the SIS was not required to disclose. Zaoui's lawyers issued a point-by-point response to the summary. After his arrest, he was initially confined for ten months in the maximum security Paremoremo Prison where he was placed