Gunmen grab Kiwi pilots as Fiji boils over

By TONY WALL and EUGENE BINGHAM

A young pilot flying around strife-torn Fiji to get money to pay off his student loan was one of two New Zealanders kidnapped at gunpoint on the island of Vanua Levu yesterday.

James Henry, aged 27, from Kerikeri in the Far North, came home to visit his family just a couple of weeks ago.

Now he and fellow Air Fiji pilot Maurice Parsons, 59, are being held hostage in the tiny village of Naibalebale by armed rebels loyal to coup leader George Speight.

Their kidnapping appears to be linked to civil unrest that erupted throughout Fiji after the arrest of Speight on Wednesday night.

The military also arrested hundreds of his supporters in a dawn raid on a school outside Suva where they were camped, sparking an immediate backlash that raised fears civil war was imminent.

"In the morning the soldiers came and they surrounded the school. They started the shooting," said a resident.

"Everybody was running around and the soldiers, they told them to get down, get down, nobody move."

One person was killed in the operation, 40 people were injured and 369 arrested, said Lieutenant-Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini.

He said the dead man, a 50-year-old, suffocated from the effects of teargas and none of the injured had been shot.

Within hours of the arrests, nationalist rebels in the northern town of Labasa had retaliated by seizing about 50 members of Fiji's large ethnic Indian minority, holding them in the town barracks. A police post at Seaqaqa, near Labasa, was also reported to have been seized.

The two New Zealand pilots were taken hostage when an Air Fiji plane was seized at Savusavu, on Vanua Levu island.

The Henry family tried desperately last night to get through to their Suva-based son, who is understood to be unharmed.

"We haven't heard from him. We rang his cellphone number but it's not going," his mother, Barbara, told the Herald.

Mrs Henry said her son was in good spirits when he was home two weeks ago and was not bothered by the political turmoil in Fiji.

"When you've got a big student loan, you take what jobs you can get," she said.

Mr Henry and Mr Parsons, who is from Waiuku, south of Auckland, were about to fly back to Suva when they were threatened in their plane at the Savusavu airport by six armed men and taken to the nearby Hot Springs Hotel.

Hotel owner Lorna Eden said the rebels asked for a room so they could use a telephone.

"The pilots were OK, they were not tied up but they looked frightened - we gave the rebels keys to a room ... and they rang the Savusavu police station, presumably to clear the way through town."

She said the group then took the hostages to Naibalebale village about 20km away. The paramount chief of the area, Ratu Tuiwailevu, was involved in negotiations for their release.

The rebels are understood to be allied to the group of Speight supporters who took the 50 Indians hostage at Labasa.

Last night a military spokesman, Major Howard Politini, said negotiations were continuing for the release of the pilots, who were being held in a hut in Naibalebale.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokeswoman Jocelyn Prasad said one of the hostages managed to get a call through to the High Commission in Suva.

"They are in a good condition and they are not being maltreated."

Ms Prasad said agents acting on behalf of New Zealand were last night negotiating with the hostage-takers, but authorities expected the situation to drag on.

The Fiji military have also arrested Ilisoni Ligairi, a former member of Britain's Special Air Service, and 12 special forces troops. Ligairi is Speight's main military ally and orchestrated the rebels' seizure of Parliament in May.

A military spokesman said Speight and his comrades would be held indefinitely in the guardhouse at military headquarters, the Queen Elizabeth Barracks.

Speight could face a charge of treason following a threat on the life of President Josefa Iloilo yesterday, he added. Treason carries the death penalty in Fiji.