KEY POINTS:
It has all the hallmarks of a spy thriller.
The setting is the idyllic South Pacific island of Tahiti and the plot concerns a journalist who knows too much, and is drowned by government agents.
His wife, who is having an affair with his friend, readily accepts the
death was a suicide, even though no body is found.
Then years later a former spy comes forward to publicly reveal what really happened, and is locked up for his trouble.
Some in French Polynesia think this is not fiction.
December 15 marked ten years since investigative journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud disappeared from Tahiti.
The former editor of the Les Nouvelles de Tahiti newspaper, who was known simply by the initials JPK that accompanied his articles, was originally thought to have committed suicide.
An initial inquiry into his disappearance found this was the likely cause of his death and his family grieved at the sad end to Jean-Pascal's life.
But seven years later, in October 2004, a former spy in the French Territory, Vetea Guilloux, came forward and told an official Couraud did not suicide but was assassinated.
The family's grief turned to surprise, and then outrage.
They made an official murder complaint to authorities, which kicked-off a new inquiry into the death.
Guilloux had been a member of the Polynesian Intervention Group (GIP), and originally said he was at the scene when Couraud was killed during a nasty interrogation.
The GIP was a police unit said to be under the command of French Polynesia's former president Gaston Flosse, to monitor the government's political opponents.
The news caused a stir, but Guilloux was to change his story as the revelation spread.
He later admitted he was not on the scene, but said he had only overheard two colleagues boasting of the death.
Guilloux claimed the agents, Tino Maraa and Tutu Manate, had talked about how they had drowned Couraud and dumped his body into deep water.
"I started by questioning Tino, 'do you know a journalist named JPK?' And the guy told me in Rurutu 'oh that pig we took him to the ocean with four concrete blocks and we threw him in the ocean'," Guilloux told French television channel TF1 in 2005.
"He (Couraud) was in agony and they plunged him in again. After three times he started to shit in his pants. And when he shat himself, they called the others. 'What should we do? Go to the hospital? Or clean him up?' And after... he disappeared... dead. Voila," he said.
Couraud's body has never been recovered and former president Flosse has publicly denied that he ever ordered GIP agents to kill the journalist.
There were rumours the journalist was killed because he had evidence former French President Jacques Chirac was involved in questionable dealings.
Flosse was close friends with Chirac, and the former French president is godfather to Flosse's youngest son.
Others have speculated Flosse was involved in the death because he did not like a series of articles written about him by Couraud, but no evidence has ever proved this.
Flosse's lawyer, Francois Quinquis, was sent a series of questions by AAP about the death of Jean-Pascal Couraud but they went unanswered.
Guilloux was to retract his claims of murder and in 2004 was sentenced to one year in prison for making slanderous accusations, with nine months of the term suspended.
Two months after he was jailed, at an appeal, he reiterated that Jean-Pascal had in fact been killed.
The former spy was ultimately freed and his conviction was quashed.
One who believes Couraud was killed is French Polynesian publisher Alex du Prel, who was good friends with the journalist.
"I am now personally convinced," du Prel said.
Du Prel said the way Guilloux was treated by the GIP once he came forward was suspicious.
"He was put in a cell immediately and had to spent a whole night with several of the people he was accusing, on the other side of the bars.
"They put such pressure on him that at three o'clock in the morning he said 'I was wrong' ... He was taken the next morning to court and was sentenced," he said.
Du Prel has since been contacted by other people in the GIP who have confirmed Couraud was killed by agents.
Last week the French-based journalists' group Reporters Without Borders called on the French justice minister to try to get to the bottom what happened to Couraud.
Jean-Pascal's brother Philippe is certain his brother was murdered and continues to fight for the killers to be brought to justice.
He thinks a second inquiry into Couraud's death, which began after Guilloux's assassination claims, was flawed because a judge found no evidence for murder.
An appeals court recently agreed and the murder probe will continue with a new judge in a few weeks.
"We really think things will change and we will get to the end of this," he said.
"In the file what we have are a lot of declarations from people who were not friends but colleagues (of the alleged killers), who have heard people from the GIP telling the story about the assassination.
"In fact the story of the assassination has been told to a lot of people. To about 50 people maybe. Now these people have talked again.
"Twelve people came to see us and said `hey your brother has been killed by these people'. That is what we have now in the file, very clearly," he said.
No eyewitness has been located.
He said he did not believe rumours that either Flosse or Chirac had ordered Jean-Pascal's death.
A more likely scenario is that Flosse asked GIP agents to find out what information Couraud had in his possession, and overzealous officers accidentally killed him during questioning, Philippe Couraud claims.
"People have confirmed that they (GIP agents) were responsible for following him. We know that the secret services were very interested in him at the time."
He said he had reason to believe either and audio or video tape of his brother's killing had been made, and it still may be unearthed.
A decade after his younger brother's apparent death Philippe said it was now becoming easier to talk about it, but the events were still painful.
"He (Jean-Pascal) used to say that when you are a journalist if you don't say everything about things you know, then you are an accomplice," he said.
- AAP
