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The New Zealand government is
offering to help Fijian police with their investigation into the murders of John
Scott and his partner Gregory Scrivener. The New Zealand High Commissioner in Suva is being asked to liaise between the police and Scrivener's family, after a pathologist's report said he'd been tortured before he died. Michele Harrod was to have visited John Scott and Gregory Scrivener in Suva later this month. Now she'll never see them again. "It's not about the way they died...it's the fact they have....we have to live with the way they died. It'll haunt us forever. We want the government to find out, not only how, but why...give them justice." A pathologists report concluded that Greg Scrivener had been tortured by having the fingernails of his right hand pulled out, before he was executed. But Fijian police have since explained the fingernails were removed in Suva as part of their routine DNA gathering. "But they neglected tell the New Zealand family... It has caused real distress... If we can confirm their explanation it relieves family of the thought Scrivener may have been tortured," says Foriegn Affairs Minister, Phil Goff. Phil Goff has confirmed that the man arrested and charged with the murders, was sent home from New Zealand as an overstayer a month ago. "He had been here from the time of the coup....here unlawfully without a permit and came forward rather than being deported," says Goff. Scott and Scrivener visited Auckland in February. Michele Howatt says they seemed happy at that time. |