CHIEF'S IMPRISONMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20152, 12 January 1929, Page 12

CHIEF'S IMPRISONMENT

TAMASESE SEEKS RELEASE. WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS. LEGALITY OF ACTION DISPUTED. An attempt to obtain the release of tho Samoan chief Tamasese, who is seiving a sentence of six months' imprisonment in .Mount Eden Prison for refusing to pay certain taxes, is short ly to be made in the Supreme Court. Tamasese has already instructed his counsel, Mr. A. Hall Skelton, to file an application for the issue of a writ of Habeas Corpus. It is maintained that Tamasese should not have been sent out of Samoa to r ervo his sentence, but should have been iin prisoned on the island, and in support of the contention it- is proposed to argue the superiority of the Habeas Corpus Act over the Samoau Act of 1921, under section 210 of which the Samoan chief was brought to Auckland for imprisonment. It will be submitted that this section is ultra vires and that it contravenes the Colonial Laws Validity Act, 1865, as well as the Habeas Corpus Act, which provides, inter alia, that a member of ono Stato can. not be imprisoned outside that State. Samoans, it is claimed, are not subjects of New Zealand, but are protected foreigners and the Dominion Legislature can only legislate for Samoa within the power of tho Constitution Act, 1852.