PORT VILA (Pacnews) — International conman Peter Foster has been arrested in Vanuatu after reportedly being smuggled there from Fiji on a former Australian navy minesweeper last week.
Foster was woken just after 5 a.m. on Sunday when 14 officers from the Vanuatu police’s elite mobile force stormed the house where he was hiding in the upmarket Port Vila community of Malapoa.
Foster, 44, was taken into custody at Port Vila’s main police station, where he was questioned throughout the day.
Last night he was taken to hospital for a check-up but Inspector Allan Bani of Vanuatu police said Foster would probably appear in court yesterday morning.
“He’ll be charged under immigration law with illegally entering the country without documents. We also arrested the people who were harboring him. They were arrested on charges of harboring an illegal immigrant,” he said.
Foster initially tried to run from police but was cornered by the officers who had surrounded the luxury home of the expatriate Australian couple allegedly helping him. It was the end of a Pacific-wide manhunt for the conman, who has spent time in prison in Australia, Britain and the U.S.
Bani said the former Australian navy vessel Retriever 1, which was seized on Tuesday, was suspected of being the vessel that spirited Foster into the country.
The Australian Federal Police helped find Foster by tracking the satellite phone he had been using in an attempt to convince people he was really in Fiji.
As late as Saturday night, Foster said he was meeting his Fiji lawyer and planning to appear in Suva’s Magistrates Court this week to continue fighting three immigration and forgery charges.
A bench warrant was issued for his arrest last week when he did not appear in the same case. The manhunt intensified when AFP intelligence discovered he was attempting to secure passage on a vessel leaving Fiji.
Foster’s mother, Louise, who is still in Fiji, said she received a phone call from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Sunday morning informing her that her son was all right.
Mrs. Foster had been assuring people that her son was still in Fiji, but she admitted on Sunday that she knew details of how he had arrived in Vanuatu.
He had been rowed ashore in a dinghy and was seen by a gardener “who couldn’t keep his mouth shut,”,she said.
Foster had been in Suva under house arrest while awaiting his trial when military commander Frank Bainimarama overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase on Dec. 5  last year.