AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Two French army officers accused of the fatal sinking the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior were moved Thursday to separate maximum security prisons amid reports that mercenaries had been hired to break them out of jail.
Maj. Alain Mafart, 34, was taken to Paramoremo Prison, a modern high-security facility on the outskirts of Auckland, and Capt. Dominique Prieur, 36, was flown to Christchurch Women's Prison on the South Island of New Zealand.
Both of the suspects, who the French government admitted are secret service agents, had been held in the old, medium-security Mt. Eden Prison in Auckland.
The moves followed the publication of Paris-datelined reports in the Auckland Star newspaper that mercenaries hired by the French intelligence agency DGSE might try to free the two prisoners.
Police Supt. Allan Galbraith, in charge of inquiries into the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, revealed Thursday 'a substance' had been found on a French newspaper that was addressed to Mafart and Prieur.
He said the newspaper had been intercepted and tested by scientists from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Galbraith said the scientists had 'found something,' but he refused to elaborate.
A Paris report in the Star quoted a French lawyer, M. Phillipe Derouin, as saying Auckland police were claiming the substance was the hallucinatory drug LSD.
Mafart and Prieur have been charged with arson and murder in connection with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, a converted trawler sunk in Auckland Harbor July 10 by two mines attached to its hull. A crewman-photographer aboard the ship was killed in the attack.
Greenpeace, an anti-nuclear environmental organization, used the Rainbow Warrior as a protest vessel. The group alleges France was behind the sinking because Greenpeace planned to protest upcoming French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
A French government inquiry found last month that, despite the presence of several agents in Auckland, there was no convincing proof any of them were involved in the bombing.
In a related devopment, the FBI was reported to be searching in Berkeley, Calif., for a French intelligence agent thought involved in the sinking.
Greenpeace spokesman Anne Dingwall said the FBI was looking in Berkeley for a French woman thought to be an intelligence agent who infiltrated Greenpeace before the sinking. The FBI refused to discuss the case but confirmed the agency was cooperating with New Zealand in the investigation.
