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Auckland family demands answers over man's death at Samoan prison

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1News Pacific Correspondent

An Auckland family is demanding answers from the Samoan Government five years after their son and brother died while being held at Tafai-Ngata prison near Apia.

Hans Dalton suffered from a mental illness and was found dead upside down in a water drum in 2012.

Time hasn't healed the pain for Hans Dalton's family. Five years on they've had no closure or answers.

"We feel there is a lot of unresolved issues and the people who did this to Hans have not been held to account," Mr Dalton's sister, Natasha Dalton, told 1 NEWS.

"So truth and justice has not been upheld in Hans' case."

Hans Dalton hadn't committed any crime, but he'd lost his medication during a cyclone while on holiday in Samoa.

After suffering an episode, officials put him in a prison cell supposedly for his own safety. Instead he was killed there.

"It's about that bigger picture of inadequate services. Services that are designed to be a resource to help and support people obviously failed very badly," Mr Dalton's mother Christine Wilson said.

Samoan Police first said Mr Dalton committed suicide, but later arrested a prisoner for murder, who was then cleared.

The New Zealand coroner's office has been trying to get basic information from Samoa for the last three years, but to no avail.

 

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