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number, explaining it is the only place he has it. No, we’re not doing that, is the response. He tells them the name of his lawyer. “Can we find any way that I can contact him?” he asks. Eventually, he says he insists: “Use your phone please or put something down in writing that I am thinking my rights are being abused.”

“It took them 30 minutes to work out someone could give me their phone.”

Finally connected to lawyer Greg Towers, Dotcom recalls saying: “I need your help. I don’t know what’s going on, this is bad and I need your help.”

Outside, Mona is standing on the wet grass in her nightclothes with her bulging pregnant belly. The staff are with her. Mathias Ortmann, big-brained and charmingly geeky, stands in the cool summer dawn in a t-shirt and underpants. The uniformed inspector tells him: “Obviously we will try and get you a bit more dignity as soon as it is possible.” Batato’s fine, he has his trousers on. To his great frustration, he has no cigarettes — but he does still have an iPhone in one of his pockets. Despite fears of a Doomsday device, police have left one of their suspects with exactly the sort of tool they later described as a possible threat to the case.

7.12AM
Tempero’s bedroom is searched. A second pistol-grip shotgun is found.

8AM
As Dotcom is pulled past Mona to a waiting police car, she turns to watch her husband go. Ortmann, too, looks on. Dotcom turns to Mona and says: “Copyright infringement.” He shrugs his shoulders, then adds: “Nothing to worry about.”

NEW ZEALAND POLICE admitted later they could have arrested Dotcom at the roadside as he returned from the music studio at about 4.30am, but were frustrated by their perceived need to keep him from calling lawyers. They were desperate to keep Dotcom from raising the alarm — if there was an alarm to be raised. Across the world, FBI agents were moving to shut down Megaupload and preserve data held on its computer servers. Branches of the Carpathia hosting site in Canada, the Netherlands and the United States were served with warrants which deprived millions of Megaupload users of access to their information.

They moved even before the helicopters had touched down — a detail which later added to doubts over claims of the need for the dawn helicopter assault.

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