PAPE'ETE (Radio New Zealand International / Pacific Media Watch): The trial of the alleged killers of slain journalist, Jean-Pascal Couraud, will go ahead next year after prosecutors refused to drop murder charges.
Radio New Zealand International reported today that defence lawyers had asked police to drop murder charges against Tino Mara and Tutu Manate after Le Monde newspaper reported that the home of the suspects had been placed under surveillance last year. The defence lawyers wanted the recordings to be ruled inadmissable and all charges to be dropped.
But prosecutors refused and it is expected that the trial will go ahead next year.
Couraud was the editor of Les Nouvelles de Tahiti, French Polynesia's oldest daily and was fired in 1988 for being too critical of the president, Gaston Flosse.
Mara and Manate, who have been charged with Couraud's murder, were members of Flosse's paramilitary group, which has since been shut down.
It has been a long road to justice for Couraud's family after Couraud "disappeared" in 1997. His family was first led to believe that he had committed suicide and then a police investigation was then shelved in 2002 for "lack of evidence".
But in 2004, former spy Vetea Guilloux, became the first to allege that Couraud had not disappeared but had been drowned with concrete blocks attached to his body. Guilloux was imprisoned for "slander" but maintained his allegations, prompting Couraud's family to lay murder charges.
Radio New Zealand news editor Walter Zweifel has previously reported that Couraud's brother, Philippe Couraud believed the slain journalist was killed for being in possession of documents that could have damaged Flosse as they "pointed to money being channelled via Japan, possibly to an account held by Jacques Chirac".
The surveillance tapes that Le Monde reported on seem to corroborate this, as they reveal the paramilitary boss, Rere Puputauki, discussing with Mara how Couraud had been bugged by Flosse's intelligence unit and how Mara had killed Couraud.
Puputauki has been charged with kidnapping only as he allegedly remained on land while Mara and Manate took Couraud out on a boat to drown him off the coast of Tahiti.
Les Nouvelles closure poses 'danger for diversity
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Watch
