Results for From the Courts

A 50-year-old Tongan man in Gisborne, New Zealand was sentenced to 140 hours of community work by the Gisborne District Court after he pleaded guilty to assaulting his son with a kafa (taovala belt) for refusing to read the bible.

Two serial thieves who were jailed earlier this year for robberies committed in 2015 and 2016 – Rodney Toki (21) and Tevita Vaka (29) – have both had their prison sentences extended after the Supreme Court of Tonga found them guilty of committing a break-in robbery in May last year.

World Rugby has increased by 19% its current investment on the Fijian, Samoan and Tongan Rugby Unions and the preparation of their national teams for the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Meanwhile Tonga’s Rugby Union is in turmoil after the Supreme Court voided an amendment to its Constitution, and on November 9 appointed the Acting Attorney General to call a meeting to elect a new President, Deputy President and other officers.

A New Zealand court has sentenced a 26-year-old Tongan, Malachi Tuilotolava to 24 years’ imprisonment for his commanding role in a drug trafficking haul last year 2016. Malachi was found guilty of supervising the unloading 501 kilograms of Methamphetamine from a boat on a beach in the Northland region of New Zealand. The haul is reportedly the largest importation of drugs into New Zealand.

A New Zealand court last Tuesday 2 October sentenced former professional rugby player and Tongan prospect, Dylan Halaholo, to nine months’ home detention after he was convicted of committing indecent acts in public on three separate occasions this year. The 23-year-old was last year convicted of the same indecent acts and was put under intensive supervision.

A Tongan man in Australia, Tevi Koloamatangi (47), has been found guilty of murder in relation to the shooting of a man outside a nightclub in the city of Wollongong in 2007. A Serbian man, Zlatan Popovic (45), was also found guilty of hiring Tevi as a hitman to conduct the shooting. The pair are expected to be sentenced sometime in October.

Lord Nuku and the Yan Jiang Group Ltd were ordered by the Court of Appeal on 6 September to pay Lord Luani TOP$3,380,335, being the net value of rock that they illegally extracted from a lot of land in Lord Luani’s estate at Malapo.

A fireman was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for assaulting a fellow fire officer with an iron rod at the Central Fire Station in Longolongo last year. The victim suffered a fractured skull.

A 26-year-old man in New Zealand, Gustav Sanft (of Tongan heritage), has been found guilty of manslaughter by a New Zealand jury in relation to the death of his 2-year-old daughter, Amokura Daniels-Sanft, in 2016. He was sentenced to four years and four months’ imprisonment today.