Attempts by the U.S. authorities to get Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom extradited took a major blow this week when Justice Helen Winkelmann deemed that the police who raided Dotcom’s Auckland mansion acted illegally.

More than 90 officers were involved in the operation in January which saw the Megaupload founders’ house completely ransacked. Police arrived at the property in helicopters and reports state that they even cut through to the safe room where Dotcom was hiding and arrested him!

Justice Winkelmann criticized the police involved in the raid, stating that they had ‘exceeded authority’. In a 56-page document, Winkelmann made a number of damning statements about the way in which the police working on the case had behaved. She said that the warrants that were used in the January raid (which also saw the homes of several others connected to Megaupload searched) were too broadly cast. She said that these warrants were: “lacking adequate specificity as to the offence…The search and seizure was therefore illegal.” Continue Reading

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