The New Zealand High Court has ordered the police to inspect all digital information illegally seized last year from Kim Dotcom’s mansion, and return everything not directly related to the ongoing prosecution. The judge further ruled that the FBI must ship back cloned drives that were sent to them, and destroy all copies the U.S. Government has archived.

Last year the search warrants used by police to raid the New Zealand home of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom were ruled to be overbroad and illegal.

In addition, cloned copies of Dotcom’s hard drives sent to the FBI were deemed to have been unlawfully obtained.

After the ruling Dotcom’s legal team asked the court to order the return of Dotcom’s personal belongings, and in a ruling today Judge Helen Winkelmann did just that.

New Zealand police are now required to go through all illegally seized evidence to determine what is relevant to the ongoing prosecution, and to return the rest.

In her ruling Judge Winkelmann rejected the argument that the police made only a minor mistake resulting from a technical error in the FBI-requested seizure.

New Zealand police are now required to go through all illegally seized evidence to determine what is relevant to the ongoing prosecution, and to return the rest.

If it was illegally seized how can they keep any of it?

And would the FBI really give up the drives they were sent and not keep the contents elsewhere.

To paraphrase slightly, "Team America says, F You!"

so the evidence was obtained illegally.. mm even if they extradited him, sounds like the court case would eventually get thrown out of court (in the USA) due to inadmissible evidence.