PNG: Take 'interfering' Australia to world court
15 March 2010
BY KEITH JACKSON
And, while prime minister Michael Somare did not name
In what seems an attempt to distract public attention away from serious issues in his government, Sir Michael alleged “that PNG was unwittingly drawn into the Moti issue by agents of another government trying to carry out a political plan contrived by their government to discredit Moti”.
Justice Minister and Attorney-General, Dr Allan Marat, called
for proceedings to be brought against
He said Australian police had unduly influenced PNG police
to arrest Mr Moti while transiting through
Mr Wenge said the act in arresting Mr Moti in transit was instigated by Australian police, was based on a fake document and broke international law.
Meanwhile Bulolo MP, Sam Basil, has called on Sir Michael to hold a Commission of Inquiry into the financial management of the national parliament.
Mr Basil said there had been huge mismanagement of funds allocated to parliament since the National Alliance came into office in 2002.
He said many contracts had been awarded by Speaker Jeffery Nape, including a K160,000 contract to chop down two trees.
“I heard that the contract was given to a relative of the Speaker and that’s why Mr Nape paid a K160,000 for a job that could cost only K5000,” Mr Basil said.
Source: PNG Post-Courier,
12 March 2010
The whole Moti issue was a planned Australian Intelligence operation to protect their strategic interest and in mantaining their foreign policy objectives in the Solomon Islands.
Julian Moti posed a threat to the welfare and the sustanance of the RAMSI operation in the Solomon Islands.
Australia knew that with the appointment of Julian Moti as the Solomon Islands attorney general, RAMSI days in Solomon Islands were numbered because the then Solomon Islands PM Manaseh Sogavare was concerned with how the RAMSI Operation was interfering with his states sovereignty as an independent state.
Should the RAMSI Operation be kicked out of Solomon Islands it would one of Australia's worst foreign policy disaster pertaining to the war on terror campaign.
They created a legal issue to pursue a political interest.
Posted by: Jack Klomes | 12 September 2014 at 05:22 PM
PM Somare and his government will not be compelled to take the action demanded by Morobe Governor Luther Wengee as this will also expose his part in the Julian Moti saga.
To date, PNG's PM has been consistently denying that he gave orders for Moti to be flown out of PNG to the Solomons in a defence force aircraft.
But about a fortnight ago when the PM was suspended as a result of a leadership tribunal, he privately admitted that he gave orders for Moti to be flown out of the country.
The ball is in PNG's court. PNG authorities initially failed to take the required actions to stop the AFP and its own law-enforcement agencies to arrest, keep under custody and later smuggled Moti out to the Solomon Islands.
The PNG government has so far failed to take the necessary actions against the head of both the police and defence force for conducting inappropriate actions in their part involving Moti.
But will PNG have the political will now to do what it hasn't done before?
This will also expose the country's own PM for some alleged wrong doings by his very actions.
Posted by: Reginald Renagi | 11 April 2011 at 08:49 AM
This morning's Sydney Morning Herald:
Moti wins right to contest sex trial ruling
By Geesche Jacobsen
"THE High Court will consider whether the government turned a blind eye to the illegal rendition of the former Solomon Islands attorney-general Julian Moti to face child sex allegations in Australia in 2007."
Read the full story here - http://www.smh.com.au/national/moti-wins-right-to-contest-sex-trial-ruling-20110410-1d9dd.html
Posted by: Peter Kranz | 11 April 2011 at 08:41 AM
Hi Thom - As I said in my previous post, whether the AFP action was subsequently found to be inept or if the Australian legal action was politically Moti-vated is totally irrelevant to any illegal action that subsequently transpired in PNG.
Your own Chief Justice ruled that PNG law had been broken yet nothing has been done to bring those responsible to justice and there has been a total cover up by those who broke PNG law.
Is this the sort of politically driven justice system you want to champion in PNG?
Aren't you actually having a dig at the Australian justice system, which apparently determined the case to your satisfaction, yet turning a blind eye at your own justice system that failed the PNG people miserably due to the political connivance of your own PM and his cronies?
So who is being unfair now mate?
Posted by: Paul Oates | 10 April 2011 at 02:12 PM
Paul, Peter and Reg, as you are all Moti buffs and aware the mainstream media (thanks to Canberra gremlins) have blacked out all positive news for Moti in Australia for the last five years, you would not have the recent High Court decision.
But I invite you all to google Moti and the High Court of Australia decision to grant Special Leave to Appeal.
You may also know that only one out of every 20 Special Leave Applications get through at High Court level.
Now Australia's best legal brains seem to think the Australian governments pursuit of Moti was possibly politically motivated and otherwise unlawful. Interesting isnt it?
Perhaps the ever neutral site administrator can in all fairness publish Patrick O'Connor's article linked via Google.
But then he wouldnt want anything anti-Australian government published on this site would he? Then again, is that to say the High Court of Australia is anti-Australia?
______________
You are obviously not a diligent enough reader of PNG Attitude, Thom, otherwise you would realise that the suggestion in your final paragraph is nonsense - KJ
Posted by: Thom M Kamiak | 10 April 2011 at 11:58 AM
Luther Wenge appears convinced that there is an existing and pre-eminent domain, a body politic capable of judicial review and judgment that supersedes PNG law.
How can it be that such an easy road of appeal may be made outside PNG’s courts?
Is it so that the rulers of PNG are already committed globalists, ready and willing to commit the exercise of judicial process affecting local outcomes to an international body?
Somebody should sound the alarm.
Most PNG’ns think their constituted body of law is reflective of their sovereignty.
Is Mr Wenge asserting the fallacy of such thought?
Posted by: Robin Lillicrapp | 19 September 2010 at 09:49 AM
Paul - As to examining my own earlobes being a futile exercise, in this particular instance I do agree with you.
As to each of us using our own eyes to determine the merits of my original contention, it's clear that one of us needs to visit the optometrist.
The essence of my original post was to highlight the PNG Ombudsman's decision to table the Moti Report in the PNG Parliament and the subsequent
action by your own PM.
By tabling the Moti Report in the PNG Parliament, how does this confirm any illegality?
The PNG Defence Inquiry clearly found that your PM had ordered and sanctioned an illegal act under PNG law. Not anyone else's law, your own PNG law.
If the situation was so clear that your PM and his fellow conspirators could see into the future where it was determined that the AFP had
incorrectly acted and that the arrest warrant was not valid, why didn't your PM et al let Mr Moti stay around and contest his extradition
in a PNG Court or an Australian Court and have the matter dismissed?
After all, Mr Moti was a lawyer and had been appointed to a senior legal position? Surely he could therefore be expected to adequately defend himself if he wasn't guilty?
All the illegal decisions and acts, and the exposure of these illegal activities as determined by a PNG Committee, properly convened by a PNG Minister, sitting in PNG, and involving eminent and respected PNG legal and military personages, were committed by none other than the PNG PM and his cohorts as outlined in the Report.
This Report was not allowed to be accepted
and read in the PNG Parliament by action of the PNG Speaker.
To then have the Morobe Governor and a legally qualified person, suggest there was some malign and clandestine 'foreign' influence infiltrating into PNG is a bit like raising a child's bedtime story about the sanguma man.
Surely Mr Wenge's qualifications allowed him to see what had transpired under PNG law in PNG? So why did he raise a conspiracy theory unless he had proof it happened.
Of course, I can only assume that you can advise me where I may have overlooked something
pertaining to PNG law concerning the above matters.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 19 September 2010 at 08:38 AM
Paul - Having read the decision of the Supreme Court of Queensland in the Moti matter, both the QC for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and the defence counsel for Moti (and the Court) agree that the original warrant of arrest issued by the Magistrate in Queensland pursuant to which Moti was arrested in Port Moresby in 2006 was illegal.
There is no doubt Moti's arrest in PNG was illegal.
The charade that was carried on, of which you have now become part, it would seem, is a futile exercise in examining your own earlobes.
The Ombudsman's Report partially confirms the illegality of the whole undertaking.
Liklik toksave tasol.
Posted by: Paul Karu | 18 September 2010 at 10:50 PM
Lawyer Peter Pena (claiming to be Moti's PNG lawyer) is doing the rounds of PNG blogs condemning Australia's actions over Moti as illegal and rubbishing recent articles by Prof John Nonggor.
Here's a link to one - http://www.pngblogs.com/2010/07/nongorr-flogging-dead-horse.html
is this is the same Peter Pena recommended for prosecution by the Commission of Inquiry into the Finance Department for allegedly helping Andrew Mald get away with K5 million from the pubic purse?
As well as criminal prosecutions, the Commission has recommended that four lawyers be referred to the lawyers’ statutory body for “dishonourable, improper and unprofessional behaviour”.
Amongst other claims he says that arresting Moti in the transit lounge at Jacksons Airport was illegal as he had not officially entered PNG because he didn't have a valid visa!
Posted by: Peter | 27 July 2010 at 11:46 AM
The Moti saga is not over yet. Is it a coincidence that this is occurring just before a proposed vote of no confidence in the Somare regime?
AFP report from Friday...
________________________
Ex-Solomons official to be tried for child sex
SYDNEY - Former Solomon Islands attorney-general Julian Moti will be tried in Australia for the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu after an appeals court Friday overturned a freeze on the case.
Fiji-born Moti won a permanent stay on the case in December, after a Brisbane Supreme Court ruling that Australian police payments to the alleged victim and her family "brought the administration of justice into disrepute".
The judge said the police payments, made to compensate the victim's family while she made her case against Moti, raised serious questions about Australia's justice system and were an "affront to the public conscience".
But the Court of Criminal Appeal Friday overturned the stay, finding the payments were not made in bad faith or without authority, and that the charges against Moti -- an Australian citizen -- were too serious to be abandoned.
"This was a different case from the ordinary example of an Australian tourist on a short trip abroad taking advantage of individual children over a short period of time," said appeal judge Cate Holmes.
"The case was an exceptional one because the offences were committed over a six-month period against a 13-year-old complainant, with allegations of very serious sexual assault, in circumstances where the accused was 20 years older than the complainant and had some ability to interfere in the machinery of government."
Charges over the 1997 rape were orignally dismissed by a Vanuatu court and Moti said Australia only revived them in 2006 to stop him from becoming attorney-general of the Solomon Islands.
He sparked a diplomatic row after skipping bail in Papua New Guinea and fleeing via military aircraft to the Solomon Islands.
Then-Solomons prime minister Manasseh Sogavare appointed Moti attorney-general and refused to extradite him, prompting strong protests from Australia.
Moti was ultimately deported when Sogavare was ousted in December 2007, and will now be tried on the charges at a date to be determined.
Posted by: Peter | 18 July 2010 at 08:32 AM
I share similar sentiments with Paul. What has now transpired is becoming a national scandal.
It is totally unacceptable for one man to think himself above the law by bringing the whole country into serious ill-repute.
All concerned relevant authorities should now diligently do their part in bringing all those implicated in the Moti report to justice, without fear or favour.
Posted by: Reginald Renagi | 15 March 2010 at 12:35 PM
As defence arguments go, this one takes the cake. A far better one could have been the proverbial 'streaker's defence: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time, yer Honour.' Both defences are nonsensical however at least the streaker is acknowledging his mistake.
If correctly reported in the PC, this outburst by the PM and Mr Wenge demonstrates just how much 'nous' Mr Wenge has as far as a knowledge of the PNG law is concerned. Considering he swapped the law for politics however, he clearly believed he would do better in politics. Sad to say, this article and events in his home province indicate he is a dismal failure at both.
Irrespective of the merits of the case against Moti, a legally binding warrant for his arrest had been issued by a court. That the court case against Moti was subsequently dismissed through a reported technicality is totally irrelevant to the facts that existed when the PNG police detained him.
At the time of Moti's illegal transportation out of PNG, the Australian court's decision was still very much in the future. However the court's future decision is irrelevant to the real issue. The PNG (not Australian), Chief Justice determined various people including the current PNG PM broke PNG law.
That PM Somare now seeks to contest that decision is something that must be determined in a PNG court of law. This has nothing to do with any country other than PNG. Any other suggestion merely demonstrates how ludicrous that argument and the thoughts of those making it are. PM Somare must stand aside while the issue (and perhaps many others), are determined in the PNG courts.
All the subsequent actions in spiriting Mr Moti to the Solomons were illegal under PNG law. The PNG Chief Justice has clearly defined this in his report. Mr Wenge obviously believes he knows better yet he seems very confused as to who in PNG can decide what is legal and what is not. Is this an example of how some PNG politicians now consider themselves? Above the law, as determined by their own Chief Justice or is it an amazing ability to determine the law when it suits them?
Mind you, it does seem to be claimed that there must be some god given ability to foresee into the future and to be able to determine what the results of the future court case in another country would be. Is this some clairvoyant attribute that Sepik crocodile deities make possess that we were previously unaware of?
The future credibility of an independent PNG justice system is on the line. If those who were determined by the PNG Chief Justice as breaking PNG laws now seek to overturn this decision it can only legally be in a PNG courtroom.
If this doesn't happen, then PNG has descended into a further down the road to total dictatorship. All those who agree with or champion this action will be held accountable by future generations.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 15 March 2010 at 10:52 AM