Escaped Prisoners

Recaptured

(From our own Correspondent ) Nukualofa, August 5 THE five male prisoners who escaped from Mataki’eua Prison at the end of July were recently recaptured by the police near the village of Ha’asini on Tongatapu.

A number of youths from Ha’asini vil lage, who went down to the beach to spear fish by torchlight, discovered the escapees and two of them rode on horse back to the aerodrome at Fua’amotu, sev eral miles away, and informed the police by telephone.

It is recalled that six other Tongan prisoners escaped from Tongatapu in a small boat last year. After living for some months on the uninhabited volcanic islands of Hungatonga and Hungaha’apai, to the north-west of Tongatapu, three of them decided to return to Tongatapu to steal a cutter but were blown off their course and landed on the rarely-visited island of Vatoa, southernmost of the Lau Group of Fiji and several hundred miles to the westward of Tonga. There they pretended to be Tongan fishermen.

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The prisoners stayed at Vatao and were treated kindly by the inhabitants until a ship from Lomoloma (where the news of the escaped Tongan prisoners was known) called at Vatoa and picked them up. At Suva they were identified and im prisoned for some weeks for failure to pay fines for landing on Fijian soil with out a permit. They were finally returned to Tonga on the “Matua.”

Of their three companions who re mained at the island of Hungaha’apai, one had fallen off a precipice while bird-hunt ing and had been killed; the remaining two were brought back to Tonga on the Government despatch vessel “Hifofua.