30 yrs later, French agent apologizes for bombing boat

A retired French secret service agent has apologised for planting the bombs which sank a Greenpeace ship 30 years ago, killing a photographer and causing an international incident that tarnished the image of France.

Jean-Luc Kister told Television New Zealand yesterday that he and his colleagues never meant to kill anybody when they attached two bombs to the Rainbow Warrior on July 10, <g data-gr-id="30">1985,</g> while the boat was moored in Auckland. The boat was to travel to French Polynesia to protest French nuclear testing. 

The bombing killed 35-year-old Portuguese-born photographer Fernando Pereira, who drowned. Kister said their intention was only to sink the boat, and the death has plagued his conscience ever 

since. He described the operation as a “big, big failure.” 

“We were not cold-blooded killers,” Kister said. “We did everything to preserve <g data-gr-id="27">life</g> of the people on <g data-gr-id="28">board</g> of the Rainbow Warrior.”  He said he was surprised when he first got the orders to bomb the Greenpeace boat, an organization he considered to be made up of troublemakers but not very dangerous.

“For us, it was just like using boxing gloves in order to crush a mosquito,” he told TVNZ.(AFP) He said he was told Greenpeace had been infiltrated by Russian KGB agents. Kister, who was an agent with France’s Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, said he was the diver who attached the bombs to the ship’s hull. He directed his apology to the photographer’s daughter.

“I would like to take this opportunity given to me by the TV of New Zealand to express my deepest regrets,” he said. “And apologize to Ms. Marelle Pereira and her family for the accidental death of Fernando Pereira.”