The Court of Appeal ruled today that the police raid on Kim Dotcom’s house 2 years ago was legal.
Listen to January 21st 2012 to hear the background to this story.
Now Mr Dotcom and his lawyer have 20 working days to decide whether to take the case to the Supreme Court.
One other ruling from the Court of Appeal was that the New Zealand Police should not have given copies of material taken from Mr Dotcom’s house to the US FBI. However, this decision is two years too late. The FBI has had plenty of time to read all the files taken from Mr Dotcom’s computers. It’s not clear that anything can be done about it now.
Kim Dotcom is fighting to stop the FBI from extraditing him to the US to face charges of copyright infringements, money laundering, and some other charges.
If you don’t know who Kim Dotcom is, perhaps this photo will jog your memory.
Vocabulary
- Court of Appeal is a higher court than the High Court. The Supreme Court is the highest court in New Zealand.
- extradite – to hand over a suspected criminal to the police in another country
- copyright – ownership of work by the artist, writer, composer or movie maker etc
- infringement – a crime, breaking the law
- money laundering – hiding money made illegally, often by using it for something else or sending it to another country
Grammar
should not have given – a mistake in the past