Asia-Pacific

Papua New Guinea leader's son faces murder charge

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-06-16 10:38

CANBERRA - The son of Papua New Guinea's acting prime minister will be charged with murdering a woman at the family home, police said Thursday.

The case adds to the political turmoil in the South Pacific's most populous island nation, where governments are historically unstable and undermined by allegations of corruption and nepotism.

Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal said he personally reported the "alleged murder" to Police Commissioner Tony Wagambie on Monday after the 29-year-old woman's body was found at the family home in the capital, Port Moresby.

Abal's adopted son, Teo Abal, was arrested at a Port Moresby hotel Tuesday night and remained in police custody Thursday.

Police spokesman Supt. Dominic Kakas said police will charge Teo Abal, 21, with willful murder Thursday. He will likely make his first court appearance Friday when he is indicted, Kakas said. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

Teo Abal is unemployed and the youngest of Sam Abal's two children. He lives at his father's house, where the woman's body was found.

Kakas said the dead woman worked as a waitress at a Port Moresby hotel. Her name has not been made public.

Sam Abal has pledged full cooperation with the police investigation.

"If any of my family members are involved, they will face the full brunt of the law and will not be treated differently from anyone else in similar situations," he said in a statement Tuesday.

Wagambie said Tuesday that the acting prime minister was away from the house and was alerted to the death by a security guard who found the woman's body in a banana garden within the grounds of the premises.

The guard alleged that he opened a gate to Teo Abal and the woman shortly before dawn Monday and that the pair walked hand in hand into the garden, Wagambie said.

"The guard claims that some 20 minutes later, he heard the woman scream, and further claims that some time after, Teo comes out and tells him that he had killed the woman and left her body in the banana garden," Wagambie wrote in his statement.

Police have not said how the woman died.

Abal is standing in for Prime Minister Michael Somare, who stepped down in December because of ill health and to clear his name before a tribunal that is investigating allegations that he failed to disclose his full income.

Somare, 75, is accused of failing to submit full income returns going back nearly 20 years.