- Fernando Pereira
:"See
Fernando "Cobo" Pereira for the officer of São Tomé and Príncipe".Fernando Pereira (
May 10 1950 –July 10 ,1985 ) was a freelance Dutch photographer, of Portuguese origin, who drowned when French intelligence (DGSE ) used two underwater mines to sink the ship "Rainbow Warrior", owned by the environmental organisationGreenpeace onJuly 10 ,1985 (see sinking of the "Rainbow Warrior").The bombing of the boat was designed to avoid any casualty, as a small bomb first exploded to "warn" the people on the boat. As the Greenpeace team evacuated the boat, Pereira stayed inside the boat to get his camera and other pieces of equipment. The second, more powerful explosion, designed to sink the boat, knocked him unconscious, which led to his drowning death.
The "Rainbow Warrior" had been used to lead a flotilla of yachts protesting against French
nuclear testing atMururoa Atoll in theTuamotu Archipelago ofFrench Polynesia and was being prepared for a campaign of demonstrations within French military operational areas.The night of the bombing
The Greenpeace flagship "Rainbow Warrior" lay moored at Auckland's Marsden Wharf on Wednesday,
10 July 1985 . It had arrived inNew Zealand fromVanuatu three days earlier - a week after President Haruo Remeliik had been assassinated in Belau. Greenpeace campaigners were preparing the former North Sea fishing trawler for the environmental group's biggest-ever protest voyage to Moruroa Atoll, one which they hoped would embarrass France over nuclear testing. On board, supporters celebrated the 29th birthday of Steve Sawyer, the American co-ordinator of the Pacific Peace Voyage.Unknown to the Greenpeace activists, French secret agents
Jacques Camurier andAlain Tonel , had set off in an inflatable dinghy across the 2 km stretch of the harbour from Mechanics Bay. When they arrived, they both swam underwater with the bombs, clamp and rope to the stern of the "Rainbow Warrior". Tonel attached the smaller, 10 kilo bomb to the propeller shaft. Camurier fixed the clamp on to the keel and ran out a rope to pinpoint a spot to attach the larger bomb next to the engineroom.The hull explosive would sink the ship, the propeller mine would cripple it. Both bombs were timed to explode in just over three hours, at 11.50 pm. The explosives laid, the Frenchmen headed back to their hidden Zodiac.
The first blast ripped a hole the size of a garage door in the engine room. The force of the explosion was so powerful that a freighter on the other side of Marsden Wharf was thrown five metres sideways. As the "Rainbow Warrior" rapidly sank until the keel touched the harbor floor, the shocked crew scrambled on to the wharf. But Pereira dashed down a narrow stairway to one of the stern cabins to rescue his expensive cameras. The second explosion probably stunned him and he drowned with his camera straps tangled around his legs. Fernando's daughter, Marelle, then aged eight, in June 1995 appealed in the French newspaper "
Libération " to anybody who was involved in the bombing operation to tell her fully what had happened in the bombing. "Now I am 18, I am an adult and I think by now I have the right to know exactly what events transpired surrounding the explosion which cost my father his life", she wrote. She also travelled to New Zealand to interview former Prime MinisterDavid Lange and Greenpeace campaigners who sailed on the "Rainbow Warrior".Recent updates
On the twentieth anniversary of the sinking, it was revealed that the French president
François Mitterrand had personally authorised the bombing. AdmiralPierre Lacoste made a statement saying Pereira's death weighed heavily on his conscience. Also on that anniversary,Television New Zealand sought to access a video record made at the preliminary hearing where the two agents pleaded guilty. The footage has remained sealed on the court record since shortly after the conclusion of the criminal proceedings. The two agents oppose release of the footage—despite having both written books themselves on the incident—and have taken the case to the New Zealand Court of Appeal and, subsequently, the Supreme Court of New Zealand.External links
* [http://www.greenpeace.org/international/rainbow-warrior-bombing/greenpeace-then-and-now "Death of a Rainbow Warrior,"] July 10, 2005 (20th anniversary), Greenpeace website.
* [http://www.rainbow-warrior.org.nz/Fernando-Pereira.asp www.rainbow-warrior.org.nz] - article on the twentieth anniversary (2005).
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