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7
KIM INSIDE,
MONA ALONE

They were taken to the North Shore Police Station, 10 minutes drive from the mansion, before being separated and put in their own cells. Dotcom, who had complained of being struck by police, was photographed — images showed the tycoon with a confused and frustrated expression on his face — and then left alone. Others were not left alone.

Of the four, it was Mathias Ortmann who was singled out for special treatment. He was shown to an interview room, seated opposite police officers and — very pleasantly — asked questions about how Megaupload operated.

It was, he says, a relief.

"My main concern was to get back to my computer as quickly as possible," says Ortmann, "because I knew at that time we were short on storage space. If I didn't get back online within 48 hours our hard drives would run full and uploads would stop. That was of great concern to me."

So, he sat at the table with the police. Eager to get back to the mansion, he said: "Anything to speed this process."

A long list of questions were posed and the answers recorded on DVD. The questions seemed straight-forward, Ortmann says, and even innocuous. Occasionally, they appeared to drift towards questions of criminality.

"I was quickly able to rebut everything they alleged," he says. Then, having spoken to the New Zealand Police, Ortmann was interviewed again — this time by two FBI agents. After a string of questions, which Ortmann batted away, one asked why law enforcement officials would travel around the world to see him. He recalls thinking he had

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