The former top legal official of the Solomon Islands appeared in court yesterday after being deported on child sex charges.
Julian Moti, who was sacked as the Solomons' attorney general earlier this week after a change in leadership in the Pacific nation, was arrested by Australian police when he flew into Brisbane from the Solomons late on Thursday.
He appeared in a Brisbane Magistrates Court which remanded him in custody and adjourned his case until Jan. 4 to allow him to find legal representation, reports said.
Moti, 42, was picked up by police at his home in the Solomons' capital Honiara on Thursday and taken to the airport under heavy police guard after losing a late legal bid to fight deportation.
The lawyer, who was at the center of a bitter and public diplomatic row between Australia and the former Solomon Islands' prime minister Manasseh Sogavare earlier this year, was charged with having sex with a person under 16.
Moti, a Fiji-born Australian national who is a close friend of Sogavare, is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu in 1997.
He denies the charges, saying they were dismissed by a Vanuatu court years ago and were revived by Australian authorities simply to prevent him from becoming the Solomons' attorney general.
Reports said Moti could face up to 17 years in jail if convicted.
The new Solomons government of Prime Minister Derek Sikua, which came to power last week, had pledged to send Moti back to Australia to improve severely strained relations with Canberra.
Moti was first arrested at the request of Australian authorities in Papua New Guinea in October last year on his way to the Solomon Islands.
He skipped bail and was flown to the Solomons on a Papua New Guinea aircraft and appointed attorney general by then Solomon Islands prime minister Sogavare.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS