Pitcairn Islanders on sex charges take appeal to court

Lawyers for seven Pitcairn Islanders facing 96 sex charges will take their argument back to court today, saying the British have no legal right to try them.

The seven are appealing an earlier Pitcairn Island Supreme Court ruling that the British had sovereignty and the legal jurisdiction to try the seven men on a range of sex charges.

The trials are scheduled to begin on the island on September 23 and if convicted the seven men will serve a possible prison term there in a jail being built by the British.

The Pitcairn Supreme Court sat in Papakura under an intriguing piece of legislation from the New Zealand Government which allowed both the Pitcairn Supreme Court and the Pitcairn Court of Appeal to sit in New Zealand instead of on the island with its population of 47.

Today, the Pitcairn Court of Appeal was due to sit in the High Court at Auckland where defence lawyers were expected to continue their argument that the Pitcairn Islanders cut off their links with Britain when they nabbed the British ship Bounty, sailed her to Pitcairn and burnt it on January 23, 1790.

That, said the defence team, severed all links with Britain and they were to ask the court today to overturn the earlier ruling giving Britain the right to carry on with the trials.

Pitcairn, half way between New Zealand and South America, is the last British territory in the South Pacific but access to the remote island is difficult today as when it was first settled by Fletcher Christian and his band of mutineers in 1790.

The island has no airstrip, no scheduled shipping service and visitors must apply in person with two character references before they are landed in a motorised whaleboat on a rocky bay.

Charges also apply to six other islanders, four living in New Zealand and two living in Australia. Extradition procedures are expected to be taken out to allow the men to be tried.

- NZPA