A leading Fijian judge who was elevated by Late king George V of Tonga as a kingdom’s lawlord has died after a short illness.
Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, 59, was Nauru Chief Justice and a former Fiji Vice President.
He was appointed to the Life Peerage in the Kingdom of Tonga in Jnuary 2010.
He held the title of Lord Madraiwiwi Tangatatonga.
Police in Tonga’s Vavaʻu islands were struggling to apprehend the US alleged murderer who was charged with the murder of his Canadian wife in Vavaʻu in June.
54yr old Dean Jay Fletcher escaped from police custody at Vavaʻu Police Station at approximately 3.30am this morning, 29 September 2016, a Police statement said.
Police confirmed Fletcher has used his own yacht to enable his escape.
“At 06.00am Police on board the Police Boat “Kapakau ‘O Tafahi” located the escaped prisoner and his yacht at approximately 6 – 10 miles Northwest of Vavaʻu and are attempting to apprehend him”, the statement said.
“The escaped prisoner is refusing to stop and making threats to himself and police officers, which has not allowed for a safe boarding at this stage. Further assistance has been dispatched to the area.
“Commissioner Steve Caldwell says that the full circumstances of Fletcher’s escape will be investigated but at this stage our priority is to safely apprehend and return Mr. Fletcher to custody”.
Moniteveti Katoa used his experience working at DFW International Airport to smuggle what he thought was cocaine onto flights headed for cities nationwide.
He also recruited his wife, who worked the ticket counter for American Airlines, in the scheme.
And he was prepared to smuggle explosives through security and onto airplanes in exchange for money, prosecutors said Thursday.
Katoa bragged a lot about his criminal past, then he negotiated the deals. But his contacts turned out to be federal agents.
A leader in the local Tongan community who worked for an aviation company at the airport, Katoa was sentenced Thursday to 15 years and eight months in federal prison for his part in the drug-distribution network.
The defendants managed to get the fake drugs, which were provided by undercover police, onto commercial flights traveling from Dallas to Las Vegas; Newark, N.J.; Phoenix; Chicago; Wichita, Kan.; and San Francisco.
U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle agreed with prosecutors that Katoa, 53, was a leader of the drug plot, which was broken up in July 2015 when he was arrested along with 45 others, mostly from Dallas and Fort Worth, in an undercover sting.
Three others used their positions at the airport — or contacted people who worked there — to bypass security in order to transport what they thought was cocaine.
The defendants said they had relatives who worked in baggage handling, security and other DFW Airport jobs who could help, along with family members in other countries such as Tonga and New Zealand. Among those who have already been convicted are Katoa’s cousin and nephew.
His wife, Janelle Isaacs, 42, is scheduled to be sentenced in December.
“We’re talking about our airport” and someone willing to use it for “dangerous activities,” Boyle said before sentencing him.
The new information about explosive devices was revealed by an FBI agent during the sentencing hearing. Prosecutors introduced the evidence to support their request for a stiff sentence.
“He bragged that he could fly a bomb wherever he chose to,” FBI Agent Ray Harrison testified.
Agents decided to test that resolve.
In December 2014, Katoa told undercover officers he would be willing to fly plastic explosives on a plane from DFW Airport and he negotiated a $4,000 fee for the job.
Katoa apologized to the judge, saying he was sorry for what he did and that “I dishonored my family.”
“I hurt a lot of people that was depending on me,” he said.
Security hole
Katoa and others talked about exploiting a major hole in DFW Airport security by using employees, and they said it was a good thing terrorists didn’t know about it, Harrison said.
Katoa’s cousin, a baggage handler, told undercover officers that he knew when the Transportation Security Administration was conducting random checks of employees’ bags before they went to their work areas because a family member who worked in security would alert him.
Katoa said that he was fired from his airport job in 2012 for drug use but that he still had access to the airport and “extensive knowledge of airport procedures,” court records said. He worked for an aviation company at DFW.
In addition, Katoa said he had four cousins who worked at Federal Express who were moving marijuana. And he said he had family in Tonga, Hawaii and New Zealand who could help distribute methamphetamine and cocaine.
Katoa had his wife book flights for him that didn’t have federal agents on board. She was also able to bypass security by using her employee credentials to smuggle drugs into the gate area.
Katoa knew where the airport security cameras were, meaning his wife could hand him the drugs in a backpack without detection.
Assistant U.S. Attorney George Leal said that Katoa’s wife could have gotten him discounted or free airline tickets due to her job and that the couple could have flown all over the world together. Instead, Katoa got greedy and selfish and decided to drag his wife into the illegal plot.
“In the end, that’s what it boiled down to,” Leal said. “It’s ‘me before mankind.’ … He doesn’t care about the safety of anybody.”
Boyle said Katoa is not like the typical defendant involved in a large drug conspiracy. She said he is a leader in his community to whom people looked up.
“I don’t know what happened to you,” the judge said.
Katoa’s attorney, Christopher Lewis, called his client an “opportunist” who was not a ringleader and who mostly bragged and exaggerated about what he could do.
“He was trying to sell himself,” Lewis said.
Cartel bodyguards
The case got started in 2011 when undercover federal officers investigating Mexican drug cartels learned about Tongan men whom the cartels hired as bodyguards, said Harrison, the FBI agent.
One of the bodyguards, Funaki Falahola, told an undercover officer in spring 2013 that he and a cousin and other family members could help transport cocaine on American Airlines and United Airlines flights from Dallas to cities across the U.S.
“Falahola stated that it would be no problem to transport to the other locations because they have contacts there,” a federal complaint said. “Falahola said the highest profit on drugs would be to transport them to Hawaii for sale.”
Falahola said methamphetamine and cocaine would sell for a higher price in Hawaii. Falahola told officers that Katoa had worked for American Airlines for 25 years. Falahola is scheduled to be sentenced in October.
Katoa, who is Falahola’s uncle, told one of the undercover officers that he could carry drugs on his body to their destination, in part by placing his name on the employee flight list instead of the passenger manifest, thereby skirting TSA scrutiny.
Katoa said that before September 2011, he had once moved 100 kilograms of cocaine by commercial aircraft.
According to the original federal complaint in the case, Katoa told the undercover officer that his younger brother earned between $280,000 and $480,000 a week transporting drugs to Hawaii before he was arrested and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He said his older brother got eight years in prison after being arrested in New Zealand with $900,000 worth of cocaine.
Katoa also told an undercover officer that he had several ways to smuggle illegal drugs and that he had been “flying several times a month to observe how TSA conducts its security checks in various cities,” court documents said. He also said he had been “waiting for the opportunity to transport illegal drugs on American Airlines.”
In one case in summer 2013, undercover officers gave Falahola a backpack that they said contained 4 kilograms of cocaine. He and Katoa then carried the package on an American Airlines flight to Las Vegas and gave it to another undercover officer for a $9,000 fee, the indictment said.
Fort Worth-based American, which uses DFW Airport as its main hub, issued a statement last year saying it was taking the matter seriously and had been cooperating with authorities. It said the company’s top priority is “the safety and security of our customers and employees.”
Tonga’s Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pōhiva said his government will not support any bill to allow children as young as 15-year-old to get marry.
He said the matter was mentioned in Parliament apparently for the MPs to consider because it was evident Tongan children as young as 15 were pregnant. He said the statistics was significant and there was a problem.
Hon Pōhiva said the government has no proposal to allow child marriage and as far as he understands there was nothing submitted into Parliament on it.
He said he understood those who were behind the idea have taken into consideration the condition in which young girls who fell victims to their perpetrators suffered severe consequences as a result.
But we do not want to encourage it through law, he said.
The Prime Minister said there are other ways of resolving the problem and he believed those at the responsible sectors are working on it.
The legal age of marriage in the kingdom is 18. Children as young as 14 can marry but only with parent’s consent according to the law.
As Kaniva News reported last month the Tongan Deputy Speaker Lord Tuʻiʻāfitu told the House he was shocked at the number of child marriage in Tonga.
Radio New Zealand has quoted Ofa Gutteinbeil Likiliki from Tonga’s Women and Children Crisis Centre (WCCC) as saying the young victims of rape have been made to marry their rapists under a law that gives parents the power to approve underage marriages.
“We do have cases that we have documented at the centre where the young girl has been forced to marry the perpetrator who raped her,” she said.
“She’s been forced to marry the perpetrator to prevent shame, embarrassment, talk in the village. So the perpetrator will come with the family, make the traditional apology and then it’s accepted by the young girl’s family and then the decision, which is made largely by the family, is to get them married.”
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Child marriage in Tonga “shocking,” Lord Tuʻiʻāfitu says, questions power of Tongan law
Pedestrians in a road in Maʻufanga were left shaken after a car suddenly careened off the road and smashed into trees at a nearby residence.
The car ploughed a fence and ended up in front of a house opposite ʻAhopanilolo Technical Institute just after midday today.
An eyewitness, Soana Angianga said the car narrowly missed her and some of the students from ʻAhopanilolo.
There were no reports of injuries.
Police could not be reached for comments.
Tongan ministries need to become more efficient and effective, according to a young Tongan researcher awarded a doctorate at Auckland University’s graduation ceremony today.
Sisikula Sisifa’s doctoral thesis looked at management practices in five development projects in Tonga.
It concluded that cultural differences in management practices undermined the projects’ success.
With Tonga receiving a substantial amount of donor aid funding towards development projects, this was a serious problem.
But she also said that donor agencies needed to recognise that they needed to adapt their practices to working in the kingdom.
Sisifa said she was sad that her father, who had supported her studies, was unable to enjoy her graduation.
He died in her third year at university.
Sisifa and fellow Tongan Ilaisaane Fifita, both 31, were both awarded doctorates today.
Earlier this year they became the first Pasifika women at Auckland University’s Business School when they began working as research fellows.
Sisifa told the New Zealand Herald that when she was a student she wished there were female academics in the business school.
“Now I get comments from students saying that it’s nice to see a brown female face standing at the front of the class.”
Fifita said one young male Pacific student told her that having her as an undergraduate tutor had inspired him to do an honours degree.
She said she was inspired to study marketing after watching her family start their own business from scratch.
Her research looked at why Tongan and Pakeha female non-smokers don’t smoke.
She hopes her findings will help design of public health campaigns to persuade other women not to take up the habit.
One in four Pacific adults smoke in New Zealand, compared to 15 per cent of New Zealand Europeans and 10 per cent of Asian New Zealanders.
She is applying for funding for research into e-cigarettes and alcohol consumption.
The main points
For more information
First Pasifika academics graduate from university business school
The arrival of a tanker with petrol in Vavaʻu on Saturday 26 brought smiles to the faces of drivers and motor users.
MV Leiloa arrived in Vava’u with six tanktainers of fuel.
“Each tanktainer contains 23,000 litres of fuel, and there were two of diesel and four of petrol”, Matangi Tonga reported.
Customers were told to buy the petrol from Small Industries at Kameli for $2.99 per litre.
University study didn’t work out for Sela Ahio Fonua, but she is literally up in the air over the way her career has developed.
She began studying for a medical degree at the University of the South Pacific’s Tongan campus, but now plays a vital role in keeping New Zealand’s air traffic flowing safely.
“I was a year into my medical studies, but medicine wasn’t a passion, and this career that I didn’t know about looked interesting,” she told the Manawatu Standard.
Instead, she got a job as an accounting officer and after three months was asked to train as an air traffic controller.
Fonua is now working as an aerodrome/tower controller.
Air traffic controllers keep aircraft separated from each other – both in the air and on the ground.
Fonua trained in Singapore, Christchurch, and Tonga and then moved to Auckland when her husband was posted there.
She was posted to Palmerston North in February to complete her training with Airways, which provides air traffic control in New Zealand.
While Fonua has carved her own path in the sky, other members of her family have followed a more traditional academic route.
Her mother ‘Alilia ‘Ahio was a primary school teacher and her father Titali ‘Ahio was one of very few students in their village of Houma to pass the New Zealand School Certificate in the 1970s.
Her oldest sister Melolini holds an MA in accounting and is a research student at AUT, investigating how accounting standards affects the quality of financial reporting in Tonga. She works as a manager at the University of Auckland.
Her brother Stan has a scholarship from the New Zealand government to study a Bachelor of Engineering Honours in Electrical and Electronics at AUT.
Careers in air control
People interested in becoming air traffic controllers can apply online with New Zealand air traffic control provider Airways.
Successful applicants undertake a year’s training.
The first six months is intensive, using simulators to apply theory. Students then relocate for on-the-job training in one of Airway’s regional towers.
The main points
For more information
Unexpected career from medical student to Palmerston North air controller
A dispute has emerged between authorities in Tonga after four containers of rotten chicken were disposed.
The product ended up in the bad condition after the containers were not connected to the power at the wharf for days.
The dispute last week was over who should pay the costs surrounding the products and how they were kept at the wharf.
Local reports said an Asian company – Billion Star imported about 4,000 cartons of chicken from the United States in April this year.
Radio and Television Tonga said the dispute was between the Ports Authority and the shipping agency.
The Ports Authority was reported as denying any responsibility for the incident.
The four containers were disposed last week at the Tapuhia Solid Waste Management Facility.
Some residents in part of Maʻufanga woke up on Sunday morning without power after a car smashed into a power pole causing the Power company to replace it shortly.
According to Tonga’s Radio Waves of the Pacific the crash occurred just in front of the Tonga Houʻeiki Church.
Police arrived at the scene shortly but they could not be reached for comments.
Mapa Haʻangana of the Radio said an arrest was made.
The crash came after two incidents occurred on Saturday in which a van overturned in Nualei after crashing with a car shortly after two cars collided at an intersection in Nukuʻalofa.
