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Pitcairn islanders get local trial

Sep 6, 2004 1:06 PM

Seven Pitcairn Island men facing almost a hundred sexual assault charges have won their lengthy legal battle to be tried on their remote Pacific island.

The decision, issued on Tuesday, follows years of criminal investigation and legal argument that threatened to tear apart Pitcairn's tiny community.

The population of remote Pitcairn Island will swell by 50% when the trials of the seven local men accused of abusing women and girls are held on the Pacific island later this year.

Three judges, several prosecution and defence lawyers and other court staff will travel from New Zealand to the island, currently home to 47 people, in September.

But witnesses who do not live on the island will give evidence remotely by satellite, a judge says. Defence and prosecution lawyers have agreed the women can give evidence in New Zealand via a video satellite link-up that will be transmitted the thousands of kilometres across the Pacific to Pitciairn.

The Pitcairn Supreme Court, sitting in South Auckland, was told the Pitcairn Island community wanted the trials held on the island.

The men will be tried under British law after the court ruled in April that the United Kingdom did have sovereignty over its last dependent territory in the Pacific.

A defence appeal against that ruling is due to be heard next month.

The trials of the seven Pitcairn Islanders will begin in late September and are expected to run until mid-November.

If convicted the men will be jailed on Pitcairn in a new prison staffed by jailers sent from New Zealand.

Extradition proceedings are under way against another six men - two living in Australia and four in New Zealand - who face charges over allegations of sexual abuse which surfaced in 1999.

Many Pitcairn Islanders are descendants of the Bounty mutineers who settled on the island in 1790.