Prisoner killed in revenge attack, court told

An prison inmate was strangled to death with a radio power cord in a gang-related revenge attack, a court was told today.

Samoan-born Tue Faavae, 23, was found dead inside Auckland Prison at Paremoremo on March 1.

Three fellow prisoners have been charged with his murder, while a fourth faces a count of being an accessory after the fact. All four have interim name suppression.

The Crown withdrew a charge of murder against two other inmates.

Prosecutor Kevin Glubb said Faavae's killing followed a serious assault on another prisoner on February 11.

The assault was believed to have been carried out by members of a rival gang and afterwards there was "open talk of revenge", he told a depositions hearing in North Shore District Court which had a heavy security presence.

"There was a well-organised plan to exact revenge," he said.

"The target of this hit was the deceased."

Mr Glubb said one of the murder accused organised the attack, telling one of the others "to walk the talk".

The attack was carried out by the two other murder accused, one of whom had appeared to befriend Faavae after the earlier assault.

On the day he was killed, Faavae had gone into that person's cell to use a phone.

The latter closed the curtain and then covered up a security camera with toothpaste.

He and a co-accused, who had covered other security cameras with paper, entered the cell carrying a radio power lead.

Mr Glubb said they secured the lead around Faavae's neck and strangled him.

He said they called another inmate to help them drag Faavae's body to a shower cubicle, where one of the murder accused inflicted a number of cuts to the body with a sharp instrument.

The charge of being an accessory after the fact related to the attempt by the fourth defendant to retrieve a mobile phone that had been in a television set taken from his cell.

Mr Glubb said the phone, along with another seized from one of the murder accused, contained a quantity of texts that linked the three men to the killing.

The depositions hearing has been set down for two weeks.

- NZPA