Apihai offered truce

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32522, 4 February 1971, Page 2

Apihai offered truce

(N.Z Press Association) ROTCRUA, Feb. 3. The police searching for the Tongariro prison farm escaper, Charles Rangi Apihai, in the central Bay of Plenty would co-operate with anyone who could arrange a meeting with the fugitive to negotiate his surrender.

“We would be prepared to call a truce period for any such negotiations,” the officer in charge of the Rotorua police district (Superintendent P. J. McKenzie) said today. He said attempts along such lines had been made, and the police must require the presence of a police officer during any such meeting. It was also believed that Apihai might talk to a senior officer of the Paremoremo Prison, with whom he had had contact in the past, and any arrangements for a meeting would include the officer. “We don’t wish to hound Apihai, and we don’t want to have to prosecute these people who are helping him. If he can be persuaded to surrender by any means, we will assist.” Apihai escaped from the Tongariro farm on December 26 in company with two other prisoners, both of whom were caught within a few days. During his period of freedom, Apihai has eluded police searchers mostly in the Te Teko, Kawerau and Edgecumbe districts. A number of car conversions and burglaries has been reported in the area. A number of young persons have been charged in the Whakatane Magistrate’s Court with harbouring and assisting Apihai. All have been given Borstal and prison sentences.

Mr McKenzie said persons who assisted Apihai were liable for the same penalty as he would be liable to for escaping—seven years imprisonment. Those who assisted him were dealt with under section 71 of the Crimes Act, which deals with persons who become by their actions accessories after the fact of

ap offence, in this case escaping. The section reads: “An accessory after the fact to an offence is one who, knowing any person to have been a party to the offence, receives, comforts or assists that person, or tampers with or actively suppresses any evidence against him, in order to enable him to escape after arrest or to avoid arrest or conviction.”

Mr McKenzie said Apihai, by his actions, was only increasing the time he was liable to spend in prison, and those who helped him were storing up trouble for themselves.

An unfortunate position had arisen in the Te Teko area, said Mr McKenzie. Apihai was known to have been receiving assistance from some of the younger people, against the expressed wishes of many of the elders. This was causing ill-feeling in the area and making the task of the police more difficult, he said.