Dominican friar Peter Murnane, 67, along with farmer Samuel Land, 24, and organic gardener Adrian Leason, 42, were arrested after allegedly breaking into the spy base early yesterday morning and using sickles to deflate one of the distinctive orbs at the Waihopai satellite communications interception station, near Blenheim.
Calling themselves the Anzac Ploughshares, the group said on their website they wanted to draw attention to the war in Iraq. They attacked the spy base in reaction to George Bush's statement that intercepting communications was one of the key weapons in the so-called "war on terror".
Australian-born Murnane was a veteran activist who had previously spilled blood on the floor of the United States consulate in protest at the Iraq war, the New Zealand Herald reported.
Murnane also provided accommodation in Auckland to Mr Zaoui, the Algerian refugee accused of being a terrorist but later cleared.
He was responsible for checking Zaoui kept to his bail conditions after being released from prison in 2004.
Police told Blenheim District Court yesterday they were considering charging the men with sabotage under the Crimes Act, an offence which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years' jail.
Damage to the Marlborough base, run by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), is estimated at more than $1 million.
The men have all been charged with intentionally damaging a satellite, the property of the GCSB, and entering a building with the intention to commit a crime.
Yesterday, they were remanded in custody without plea to reappear in court on Monday.
The Anzac Ploughshares website says the international group Ploughshares aims to spread the message of disarmament by disabling warplanes and military equipment. The group's name comes from a biblical reference to turning swords into ploughshares.
Opponents of the Waihopai base say it is part of Echelon, the worldwide network of signals interception facilities run by American and British intelligence agencies and contributes to the war in Iraq.
As they were taken from the court into the police van, Land said he was going on a five-day hunger strike, and Leason said he would pray for those in Iraq, where one million people had died, the Marlborough Express reported.
"The war in Iraq takes some explaining," Murnane said.
GCSB deputy director for corporate services Hugh Wolfensohn told the Marlborough Express the attack had caused more than $1m damage, but the base was still operating.
"There's been no significant reduction in work. Obviously there's been some (reduction) because we've got an antenna out of action."
He did not know when repairs would take place.
GCSB director Bruce Ferguson said the security breach was "deeply disturbing" and remedial measures would be put in place to ensure it did not happen again.
Two 2m cuts were sufficient to deflate the dome. Then the activists ran around the base of the aerial randomly slicing at other areas, he said.
The domes, made of a rubberised material, acted purely as a "waterproof jacket" to protect the antennae from adverse weather. A Ploughshares spokesman, Manu Caddie, said planning the attack on the base involved a lot of texting, emails and phone calls, which were not intercepted.
"I guess it shows that the system doesn't work that well."
But Air Marshal Ferguson said the GCSB Act of 2003 specifically forbade targeting of New Zealanders or New Zealand permanent residents.
"We are in the business of collecting foreign intelligence ... satellite collection is there to collect foreign intelligence for the briefing and use of the New Zealand Government," he said.
