Dead man's son pleads for killer's life

By Waren Gamble

The son of murdered Samoan cabinet minister Luagalau Levaula Kamu says his father would want his killer's life spared.

Fifteen-year-old Malua Kamu, who is at college in Auckland, last night asked the New Zealand Herald: "Why should there be more killing?

"I forgive the person who did this to my father, and that's the way I think he would have wanted it to be too," he said. "My father would not want more killing."

In Apia on Saturday, Eletise Leafa Vitale, aged 34, pleaded guilty to murdering Luagalau Levaula, the Samoan Minister of Public Works, and was given the mandatory death sentence.

Vitale's father, also called Leafa, who is Minister of Women's Affairs, has also been charged with the July 17 murder, along with another MP, Toi Aukuso. They appear in court this week.

The death sentence has to be approved by Samoa's head of state, His Highness Malietoa Tanumafili II. The death penalty has not been carried out since independence in 1962 and is routinely commuted to life in jail. Malua Kamu said one life had already been taken, and he did not want to see another lost.

There were different views among his family and in the wider Samoan community, with some saying the killer should hang.

But Malua said his father had always practised forgiveness, and both he and his mother, Maiava, believed the murderer should be forgiven. It might have been traditional in Samoa to seek an eye for an eye, but the influence of Christianity had brought forgiveness as the new way.

"No matter what happens with all this stuff, we can never bring back my father.

"He wanted to be the best minister there was, to do that job to the fullest, and make sure he did not take advantage of what he had."

His father's clean-sweep approach to the Works portfolio has been suggested as igniting jealousy in some colleagues.

Malua said his father, a lawyer before he entered Parliament, had successfully defended the elder Vitale in court several years ago. He now felt his father had been betrayed, not just by members of his party, but by his own people.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said on television yesterday that the death penalty made those contemplating murder think twice.

"Ever since our Government became independent that law has not been amended," he said. "It means there is still the intention of the country's leaders for the law to remain."