Solomons beheading case should be thrown out, says defence

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN

HONIARA - The Solomon Islands High Court has been asked to throw out the case against two "pagan" youths accused of beheading an Australian missionary last year.

The Public Solicitor, Ken Averre, yesterday told Justice John Brown the men had no case to answer after the prosecution failed for the second time to produce a key witness - a "pagan priest" from the men's remote mountain region of Kwaio.

The prosecution had told the court the priest would provide details of a confession made by one of the men accused of beheading Australian Adventist missionary Lance Gersbach on May 18.

The confession - allegedly made during a pagan ritual including sacrifices, the court was told - would have been the first substantive evidence linking one of the accused, Na'asusu Tome, to the slaying of the 60-year-old West Australian, who was business manager at the Adventists' Atoifi Hospital, in Kwaio.

Brown invited the prosecution to close its case, effectively bringing to an end three weeks of evidence by 16 prosecution witnesses.

The Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Ronald Talasasa, had argued that Tome had carried out the decapitation at the urging of another youth, Silas Eddie Laefiwane, who had earlier threatened a different, local, mission worker.

Police investigations had been complicated by the Kwaio solidarity custom of 'amoi, amoi no'o', a practice by which the actions of a person from Kwaio can be concealed to all outsiders through a rigid code of denial.

But Averre argued the trait could not be used to shift the balance of proof to the defendants simply because the prosecution had failed to provide anything other than circumstantial evidence.

Brown is expected to rule on the no-case submission this week.