For the second day in a row, Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki says he's been summoned to the Auckland Central police station.
"It is the second round now. They want me to come into central police station again and they are going to have another bite of the cherry," Tamaki said on his wife's Facebook Live as they drove into Auckland on Wednesday morning.
"I never ever thought I would be going to the central police station, a police station at all, for standing up for our rights and freedoms and opposing this Government's restriction and control over their people, but that is exactly what is happening."
He spoke about his opposition to the Government's "weird, wicked legislation and laws" and said that might take him "right to the point of the bars". At this point, Hannah began waving her finger and said: "I don't want him to go there."
Hannah said he was due to be at the station at 9am on Wednesday.
The duo visited the police station on Tuesday morning, claiming Brian had been asked to attend to be charged with breaching his bail conditions, but they said when they arrived they were told the Crown had "intervened" and he was allowed to return home. Police, however, told Newshub their investigation was ongoing.
Newshub has contacted police for comment on the Wednesday visit.
It follows a gathering of about 2000 people at the Auckland Domain on Saturday, the second protest of its like this month. Police labelled the event a "significant breach" of the COVID-19 alert level restrictions, which don't allow for mass gatherings. Current rules permit up to 10 people to meet outdoors from two households.
Following the protest, police confirmed they would take prosecution action against "a number of individual organisers in the coming days". However, no charges have yet been publicly announced.
Brian was at the Domain on Saturday, but claims to have stayed with his family away from other attendees. He said he did not organise the rally, but did speak at the event.
The pastor is currently facing charges for organising and attending a gathering in breach of the rules earlier in October. Conditions for being granted bail on those charges is that he can't attend or organise any other protests in breach of the requirements. He has pleaded not guilty and maintains the first protest was permitted under the rules.
On Tuesday morning, the Tamakis claimed they had been told Brian was in breach of his bail conditions as he had interacted with others at the protest, which they deny.
"When they said he had breached by going through the crowd after his speech shaking his hands, I think many of you could see, we had security around us because we were stopping all of the people who wanted to come and say hello and hug and shake hands, we were stopping them," Hannah said.
Brian says he spent Saturday "in a chair [and] masked up".
"I was limited in what I could say as well so it was a very horrible situation," he said.
He claimed police were going to arrest him on Monday but they agreed he could visit the police station instead. He said he was calm about going to prison.
"They are going to charge me with breaching… I am very confident. I am happy. If I go into a cell, I will etch my name on it and will put that 'freedom reigns'. I will be back in famous words."
However, later in the livestream, Brian said he didn't think he would go to prison and that he was "going to get through this".
After being told he could go home, the pastor said he believed he wasn't being imprisoned as that would upset his followers.
"The lawyers are still going through the evidence on the Saturday."
