Fridae

Fiji's Red Cross chief, John Scott and his partner were murdered by an unknown attacker in their home in the capital, Suva, on Sunday.

Police said that 53-year-old Scott and his gay lover were virtually beheaded in an execution-style murder by the unknown attacker who broke down the front door of their house and used a sugarcane knife to hack them to death in their bed, the Agence France-Presse reports.

While Scott's head was virtually severed from his neck, his partner Gregory Scrivener, 39, suffered deep wounds to the lower part of his body.

Janice Giles, Scrivener's sister, told Radio New Zealand that Scott and his partner both feared for their lives before they were murdered.

While there appears to be no solid evidence linking Scott's death to last year's coup attempt, police now looking into a possible political link.

Scott was a key negotiator when armed gunmen took the toppled then-Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his cabinet hostage last year, holding them for 56 days before releasing them.

When suggested that the deaths could have resulted from a domestic dispute, Giles speculated that Scott had been silenced for being a witness to many events during the coup, and that Scott had received numerous death threats since the coup and during the coup.

The Police have said that they believe a third party was certainly involved, as there were blood-covered footprints going away from the murder scene.

Scott had been also involved in trying to restore Fiji's overthrown constitution "because it was the only thing that protected their civil rights as homosexuals".

Ms Giles said that "John had voiced a great deal of concern during the coup as to whether the police would protect them because of attitudes [to gays] within senior police circles."

She added that she did not trust the Fijian police to investigate the double murder and "Neither would John."

Failed coup plotter George Speight is currently facing a treason trial.