HONIARA (Pacnews) — Australian fugitive lawyer Julian Moti wanted on child sex charges, is set to resume his post as the attorney general of the Solomon Islands.
Moti evaded extradition to Australia from Papua New Guinea in October by skipping bail, hiding out in the Solomons’ high commission in Port Moresby for a week, then taking a clandestine PNG military flight to the Solomons.
Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said charges against his minister were a sham.
“If I didn’t believe for one moment that this whole case wasn’t fraught with unconscionable and politically driven lies on the part of Australian government officials, I would have cut Moti adrift months and months ago,” Sogavare said.
“If anything, the intervening time since I appointed him attorney-general and the present, has only hardened my resolve and total belief in his innocence.”
Solomons opposition leader Fred Fono repeated his call for Moti to be returned to Australia to face allegations that he raped a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu in 1997.
The Solomons Public Service Commission was poised to lift a suspension order placed on Moti since the Australian government’s attempted extradition last year.
Sogavare said new information obtained from Vanuatu showed Moti had no case to answer. He said the case ranked “as a unique case of political persecution in Australian history.”
He said Moti was cleared of criminal allegations in 1999 but the Australian government had resuscitated them for purely political reasons.
“My government has received documents from the Vanuatu Supreme Court that irrefutably show that the case against Julian Moti, QC, was closed when it was dismissed in August 1999,” he said.
Sogavare said in a statement that the Australian government had failed to produce an iota of credible new evidence to justify their claims against Moti.
“This must rank historically as a unique case of political persecution in Australian history and represents a gross violation of the rule of law, which is ironic given Australia’s proclaimed utterances about the need for other countries, including the Solomon Islands, to uphold the highest legal covenants,” he said.
“Moti QC is entitled under the Solomon Islands Constitution not only to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, but also his right to earn his economic livelihood under our constitutionally entrenched bill of rights.”
“In the meantime, my government, and Moti’ QC, are just going to get on with the job we should have been doing together for months, without this blatant interference and distraction,” Sogavare said.
A spokesman for the Australian foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, said: “The minister’s view is that [Moti] should be returned to face trial. The child sex allegations are very serious and they should be tested in court.”