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THE AUGUST 2012 hearings into the raid were a surreal event, beginning with pleas for privacy from the police officers who had carried out the raid. They needed special protection from being identified Chief Judge Winkelmann was told. Why? They were the elite strike force of New Zealand's "Special Tactics Group" — the anti-terrorist squad whose abilities were honed on the training ground used by the military's Special Air Service. The Crown drew the cloak of anonymity around the officers who conducted the raid just before Dotcom testified, telling the court he had been beaten by those same officers when arrested in the panic room.

After months of frustration, Dotcom finally got his chance to be heard. "Our beautiful home was turned into a haunted house," he told the court. The testimony was intended to explain the cost of the intrusion, not only in relation to the material seized but also the personal impact. Dotcom spoke about the loss of private and family records — the seized material included about 350 hours of movie footage and 15,000 photographs from the past 15 years.

For the Crown, there was little opportunity for glory at the hearings. Having had its legal right to be on the property ruled invalid, it now faced attempting to justify what had been ruled indefensible. John Pike, leading questioning for the Crown, told Dotcom police had no reason to believe he would have co-operated. They also had no reason to believe he would not destroy evidence.

Ridiculous, said Dotcom. By the time of the raid, the FBI had moved on foreign servers used by the company to store files, including those run by Carpathia in the United States. There was no way to delete anything, even if he had wanted to. If they were genuinely worried, why not just turn off internet access to the mansion, asked Dotcom.

If police had asked he would have co-operated, Dotcom beamed from the witness box. "I always let the police onto the property," he said. There was a sign which read, "Don't let the police in, call Wayne," at the security gatehouse — but that hadn't stopped officers visiting previously. Dotcom said Tempero "would have called me and I would have said let them in" — just as he did on two occasions in the few weeks immediately before the raid. There was an incident involving an employee alleging assault and theft of a laptop. No charges were laid after police were welcomed on and met with Dotcom. Police imaginings of resistance and evidence being destroyed were "a dream", he said. "That is fabricated. It makes no sense." And if they were worried about him accessing or deleting data, why not arrest him at 4.30am, just over two hours before the raid, when he was in central Auckland, 30 minutes drive from the mansion? Police could have moved then, he said, when there was no barrier to direct access to Dotcom. He told the court: "Nothing we have done whenever we dealt with police would have

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