Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (1985): France Bombs Greenpeace

The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior took place on the night of 10 July 1985, when French intelligence agents bombed the Greenpeace flagship as it lay at Marsden Wharf in Auckland, New Zealand. The ship was about to lead a protest against French nuclear tests in the Pacific. The attack killed the photographer Fernando Pereira and became one of the most damaging scandals of François Mitterrand’s presidency, straining relations between France and New Zealand for years.

Background: nuclear tests in the Pacific

France tested nuclear weapons in French Polynesia from 1966, first in the atmosphere and, from 1975, underground at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. Governments and campaigners across the South Pacific opposed the tests. New Zealand, under Prime Minister David Lange, was moving towards a strict nuclear-free policy that would bar nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships from its ports.

The Rainbow Warrior was a former British fisheries research trawler that Greenpeace had converted into its flagship in the late 1970s. In May 1985 it had helped move about 300 residents of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which had been contaminated by fallout from American tests in the 1950s. It then sailed to Auckland to prepare a flotilla of protest yachts for Moruroa.

The bombing

France’s foreign intelligence service, the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE), planned an operation to stop the ship. One agent had earlier joined Greenpeace in Auckland as a volunteer to gather information. Other agents arrived in New Zealand on a chartered yacht, the Ouvéa, and a two-person team posed as a Swiss honeymooning couple.

Shortly before midnight on 10 July, two limpet mines exploded against the hull a few minutes apart. The first blew a large hole near the engine room and the crew began to leave the ship. Fernando Pereira went below, apparently to fetch his cameras, and was trapped and drowned when the second mine exploded and the ship sank at its moorings.

Investigation and arrests

New Zealand police moved quickly. Within days they arrested the couple travelling as “Alain and Sophie Turenge”, who turned out to be DGSE officers Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur. The crew of the Ouvéa was questioned on Norfolk Island but released before forensic evidence linked them to the attack, and they disappeared.

France at first denied any involvement. An initial official French inquiry cleared the government, but investigations by French newspapers, especially Le Monde, showed that the operation had been ordered from high levels. On 20 September 1985 Defence Minister Charles Hernu resigned and the head of the DGSE, Admiral Pierre Lacoste, was dismissed. Two days later Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admitted on television that DGSE agents had sunk the ship.

In November 1985 Mafart and Prieur pleaded guilty in Auckland to manslaughter and wilful damage and were sentenced to ten years in prison.

Diplomatic fallout

France put economic pressure on New Zealand, including threats to its exports to the European Community. In 1986 the two countries asked the UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, to settle the dispute. His ruling required France to apologise and pay New Zealand US$7 million, while the agents would serve three years on the French military atoll of Hao.

France broke this arrangement. Mafart was flown home in December 1987 for medical treatment and Prieur in May 1988 because she was pregnant; neither returned. An international arbitration tribunal ruled in 1990 that France had breached its obligations. Separately, an arbitration in 1987 ordered France to pay Greenpeace about US$8 million in damages, and Pereira’s family also received compensation.

Aftermath and legacy

The attack failed to stop the protests. Greenpeace sent other vessels to Moruroa, and the scandal drew worldwide attention to French testing. France continued its programme until a final series in 1995–1996, then signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. The treaty built on earlier agreements such as the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In New Zealand the bombing became a defining moment. It is widely described as the first act of state-sponsored terrorism on the country’s soil, and it strengthened public support for the nuclear-free policy, which became law in 1987. In 2005 Le Monde reported a 1986 internal account indicating that President Mitterrand had personally approved the operation; Mitterrand, who died in 1996, had never publicly acknowledged such a role.

The original ship was scuttled off Matauri Bay in 1987, and Greenpeace later launched new vessels under the same name. Within the wider environmental movement that grew from events such as the first Earth Day, the Rainbow Warrior became a lasting symbol.

Timeline

• 1985, May: The Rainbow Warrior helps relocate the inhabitants of Rongelap Atoll.
• 1985, 7 July: The ship arrives in Auckland to prepare the Moruroa protest flotilla.
• 1985, 10 July: Two limpet mines sink the ship; Fernando Pereira is killed.
• 1985, 12 July: Police detain the couple posing as the Swiss “Turenges”.
• 1985, 20 September: French Defence Minister Charles Hernu resigns.
• 1985, 22 September: Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admits DGSE responsibility.
• 1985, 22 November: Mafart and Prieur are sentenced to ten years in prison.
• 1986, July: UN Secretary-General’s ruling settles the dispute between France and New Zealand.
• 1987, 12 December: The wreck is scuttled off Matauri Bay.

Why it matters

The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior showed a democratic state using covert violence against peaceful protesters in a friendly country. It cost a man his life, forced a French minister from office and turned a Greenpeace protest into an international cause. For New Zealand, it hardened a national identity built around opposition to nuclear weapons.