Moti sent to Australia to face charges

Alleged child sex offender Julian Moti fought his deportation from the Solomon Islands to the very end but was finally put on a plane to Australia to face the courts.

Supporters of the Australian lawyer rallied around him at his house in Honiara yesterday, confronting police and immigration officers in a bid to stop him being detained. The departure of a Solomon Airlines flight from Honiara to Brisbane was delayed for an hour and a quarter until Moti finally arrived under heavy police escort.

Moti was sacked from his position as Solomons Attorney-General on the weekend by the new Government of Prime Minister Derek Sikua which promised to deport him.

He is wanted in Australia on charges he raped a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu in 1997. The Fiji-born lawyer denies the charges, saying they were dismissed in a Vanuatu court and revived by Australian authorities to prevent him becoming Attorney-General.

Moti has been protected in the Solomons by his friend Manasseh Sogavare, who was Prime Minister until earlier this month when he was ousted in a parliamentary no-confidence vote.

A last-ditch legal bid to stop Moti's deportation failed when Immigration Department legal advisers dismissed a magistrate's stay of proceedings in the Moti case as flawed.

- AAP