The body of a thirty-year-old was found, hand and foot bound, Sunday evening, September 24 in Mataiea, south of the island of Tahiti, and five men, including two minors, were placed in custody, according to firefighters and the prosecutor's office, cited by AFP.
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He was tied up, with traces of blows to the face, "said the head of the fire brigade of Mataiea, Gaston Tunoa. The body was found on a vacant lot on Sunday night, the source said, confirming information from TNTV.
Drug trafficking
The autopsy concluded that he died of asphyxiation as a result of strangulation, according to a statement from the prosecutor's office. Three adults and two minors were taken into custody as part of the investigation. The death would have occurred, according to the prosecutor's office, "on the occasion of a brawl born between the victim and the defendants in the probable context of a transaction around narcotics".
The 32-year-old victim had been detained for trafficking methamphetamines. The research section of the gendarmerie of Papeete has opened an investigation for murder and drug trafficking.
At least 10,000 Polynesians, out of a population of 280,000, have already consumed "ice", the local name for methamphetamine, according to estimates by the prosecutor's office. This particularly hard and addictive synthetic drug, also called "not sleep" by Polynesians, is imported from Mexico or California and trades at more than 2500 euros per gram in Tahiti. Drug-related murders, however, are rare in Polynesia.
