A man from a pagan tribe in a remote part of the Solomons has been arrested over the murder of the Australian missionary Lance Gersbach and flown to the capital, Honiara. Police said he had been remanded for 14 days on a “holding charge” of murder. Mr Gersbach, 60, who in February came to work at a Seventh Day Adventist mission hospital at Ato’ifi on the coast of the island of Malaita, was beheaded in an outdoors attack on Sunday afternoon. His wife, Jean, and two young daughters, Anita and Louise, this week returned to family in Newcastle. Initially the investigation focused on old tensions relating to a 99-year lease by traditional owners of land on which the hospital was built in the 1960s. However, a new line of investigation was opened after police were told that the man flown to Honiara yesterday, Silas Edie Lesilamo, who is in his mid 20s, had been involved in a dispute with a hospital foreman. Full Story
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