Murderers of Mr. A. Robinson

Sentenced

FOUR natives were brought to trial at the Supreme Court, Rabaul, on April 7 for the murder of Mr. Alf Robinson, at a remote village in New Britain in mid-December, 1948. One of the accused was subsequently discharged by Mr. Justice Phillips on the submission that the native in question struck Robin son with an axe after he was dead and not while he was still living.

Robinson had been on a recruiting trip, trying to engage labour for his planta tion. The area in which he was killed had been seldom, if ever, visited by Euro peans. Eight native labourers who were with him were also killed.

Robinson was an experienced Terri torian, an ex-Administrative official with a good record of work among the natives.

He was one of the few survivors from the Tol massacre of early 1942 when the Japs lined up exhausted refugees from Rabaul and butchered them. Robinson succeeded in dashing away from his captors and lived for a considerable time in the bush before he was picked up by an Austra lian patrol and sent to Australia. Tol Plantation is not so very far from the village in which Robinson was murdered.

The trial of the natives lasted five days.

At the end pf it three of them were con victed of the wilful murder of Robinson.

The death sentence-was recorded with a recommendation to mercy as the area where they live is not fully under ad ministrative control.

AT the same sitting of the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Phillips sentenced another native to nine months’ im prisonment for manslaughter.

Some time ago, local natives were ex tracting the charges from Japanese am munition in order to sell the brass containers. The native who was convicted had ignited a large quantity of the powder which had been removed and scattered on the ground. Five natives were seriously burned in the explosion and one died later in hospital.