Results for From the Courts

Newspaper activist 'Alani Taione pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the importation of an unlicenced newspaper the Taimi 'o Tonga, and will face trial by jury on a date to be set.

A Tongan family who stole fine mats from a princess were sentenced in the Nuku‘alofa Supreme Court on April 16.

A six-year-old girl was rescued by passers-by after a man forced her into the public toilets at Talamahu Market on April 4, in broad daylight in the busiest part of the Tongan capital.

Tongan Member of Parliament, 'Etuate Lavulavu, was convicted of two counts of illegal use of a birth certificate in the State of Utah District Court, USA, this month.

Rodney Katoa Holani 22, was given a two year suspended sentence and banned from driving for three years, by Chief Justice Gordon Ward at the Nuku'alofa Supreme Court on March 3 for reckless driving which resulted in the death of Pauline Fatongia Fineanganofo (48).

A 38 year old man was sentenced to five years imprisonment for rape and one year for indecent assault, after picking up his victim at a bus stop.

Tamasi Kailahi, (23) of Holonga, Tongatapu, walked out a free man from the Nuku'alofa Supreme Court on March 2, after a jury dismissed the Murder and Causing grevious bodily harm charges against him.

A man accused of murder will face trial by jury in the Supreme Court of Tonga on 25 February 2004.

The first marijuana case to be tried under Tonga's tough new Illicit Drugs Control Act was dismissed by Chief Justice Ward at the Nuku'alofa Supreme Court on December 8.