Mr Todd pleads for help from N.Z.

Press, 20 February 1980, Page 3

Mr Todd pleads for help from N.Z.

NZPA London Mr Garfield Todd has made a dramatic personal plea for New Zealand’s help to have the terrorism charges against him dropped. Mr Todd, aged 71 the New Zealand-born former Premier of Southern Rhodesia, is due to appear in court at the end of the week t!o face the charges of assisting terrorists and failing to report their presence. The maximum penalty, according to his son-in-law, Mr Richard Acton, is death. Mr Acton told the NZPA on Monday that Mr Todd in a telephone call on Monday night! urged him to try to see the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Taiboys) in London this week. “He asked me to meet Mr Taiboys and try to get him to exert pressure to have the charges dropped and also to give him Mr Todd’s view of changes in Rhodesia,” Mr Acton said.

He said he will try to gei Mr Taiboys before the latter sees the British Foreign Secretary (Lord Carrington) on Thursday. Mr Taiboys said yesterday that he would see Mr Acton if his London programme permitted. “If he wants to see me, I will see him,” he said, until I do see him I cannot make any comment. I do not know the details of the charges that Mr Todd faces.” Mr Acton said Mr Todd is now waiting to hear whether the Attorney-General of Rhodesia plans to press ahead with -the charges. He told the police at Shabani, near Mr Todd’s farm, Hokonui, on February 11, that they should continue with the prosecution, but Mr Todd met the Attorney-Gen-eral last week. “He was able t’o tell himprecisely what the position was and how police confusion arose,” Mr Acton said. “If the Attorney-Gen-eral does not _ drop the charges in the light of the statement. Mr Todd made, I would be most surprised. “If the Governor, Lord Soames, does nod insist that the charges be dropped, I will be struck down. If they are still not, and the British cabinet does not order Lord Soames to drop the charges, I will faint with horror.” Mr Taiboys and Mr Todd have met twice before — once in New Zealand, and in London in 1976, when Mr Todd was released from house arres'J to visit Mr Acton and his wife, Judith, Mr Todd’s daughter. “Successive New Zealand governments and their Prime Ministers have taken a' great interest in Mr Todd and it is not just because he was born in New Zealand,” Mr Acton said. “There was genuine concern in New Zealand when he was persecuted and oppressed by the Smith regime.” The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) said last week that New Zealand was not “at present” considering taking Mr Todd’s arrest up with the Rhodesian author; ities.

Mr Acton said the charges arose from the arrest on February 5 of a suspected guerrilla who had with him a note bearing Mr Todd’s name, and that of the headmaster of the school on the Todd’s property. Mr Todd was accused of giving money to guerrillas, but Mr Acton said he had given $3OO to three members of the Zahn Patriotic Front' to' help them buy a car for the' election campaign. The three men who received the money were not terrorists, Mr Actors said.