Island accused head for Privy Council

By KATHY MARKS


The seven men on trial for raping and sexually abusing children on Pitcairn have won leave to appeal to the Privy Council in London as they challenge British sovereignty over their island.

Lawyers for the defendants claim Pitcairn does not fall within British jurisdiction and so Britain has no right to stage the trials being held on the island. The Pitcairn Supreme Court and Appeal Court have already rejected the argument.

The Privy Council, the highest appellate body for British overseas territories and some Commonwealth states, has agreed to hear the case. However, it rejected a submission that the trials should be halted until that hearing date, which has yet to be determined.

Legal sources suggested yesterday that if any of the men were convicted and jailed they might be allowed to remain free on bail until the Privy Council had delivered its ruling.

Simon Moore, a New Zealand lawyer appointed the Pitcairn public prosecutor, welcomed the news that the trials would go ahead. "It means that we don't have to head back to New Zealand," he said.

Britain regards Pitcairn - which is governed by the British High Commissioner in New Zealand, Richard Fell - as its last colonial possession in the South Pacific. The island was settled in 1790 by mutineers from HMS Bounty and their Polynesian wives. Many of its inhabitants are directly descended from the mutineers.

Defence lawyers have argued that Britain has no sovereignty over the island because it was merely sighted by a British ship in 1767 and never claimed in the name of the Crown.

The mutineers' landing did not make Pitcairn a British possession, they claimed, as Fletcher Christian and his men severed their ties with Britain by burning the Bounty soon after they arrived - a capital offence.

"It was the most decisive act any group of people could take against the English Government," said the Pitcairn public defender, Paul Dacre.

Pitcairners still mark the anniversary of that act by torching a replica of the Bounty every year. "Its a symbol of the attitude of the Pitcairn community towards the British Government," Mr Dacre said.

He argued that, since all ties with Britain were cut, the British legal system was not responsible for the island and Pitcairners should be left to deal with the sex abuse case themselves.

But Matthew Forbes, the Deputy Governor of Pitcairn, was unconvinced. "Pitcairn is a British overseas territory," he said yesterday.