New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has fought back tears while offering a heartfelt apology to the family of murdered\u00a0British backpacker Grace Millane, as the man accused of killing the young traveller made his first court appearance.<\/p>\n
A visibly emotional Ardern said there was a collective feeling of shame in the South Pacific nation over the fate of Millane, whose body was found on Sunday in dense bushland in western Auckland.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is this overwhelming sense of hurt and shame that this has happened in our country, a place that prides itself on our hospitality, on our\u00a0manaakitanga<\/em>,\u201d she said, using the M\u0101ori word for welcoming others.<\/p>\n \u201cSo on behalf of\u00a0New Zealand, I want to apologise to Grace\u2019s family \u2013 your daughter should have been safe here and she wasn\u2019t, and I\u2019m sorry for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Ardern told reporters at her weekly media conference that New Zealanders were heartbroken for Millane\u2019s family and were feeling her death personally.<\/p>\n Her statement came after a judge acknowledged Millane\u2019s grieving family when the man accused of her murder made a first appearance in court.<\/p>\n The 26-year-old was\u00a0taken into custody\u00a0after police launched a homicide investigation over the weekend. Officers found Millane\u2019s body on Sunday in bush on the western outskirts of the city, about 25km from where she last seen entering the central CityLife hotel with a man on 1 December, the day before her 22nd birthday.<\/p>\n Appearing in Auckland district court on Monday morning in a blue prison boilersuit, the accused had a bid to keep his name secret rejected, but an immediate appeal by his lawyer meant he still cannot be publicly identified.<\/p>\n Such restrictions are not uncommon in early court hearings in New Zealand.<\/p>\n During the appearance, Judge Evangelos Thomas addressed members of Millane\u2019s family: \u201cAll of us hope that justice for Grace is fair, swift and ultimately brings you some peace.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what we can say to you at this time \u2013 your grief must be desperate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Court documents said the accused was a resident at the CityLife on Queen Street in Auckland and was charged with killing the tourist between 1 and 2 December. No occupation was listed.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has fought back tears while offering a heartfelt apology to the family of murdered\u00a0British backpacker Grace Millane, as the man accused of killing the young traveller made his first court appearance. A visibly emotional Ardern said there was a collective feeling of shame in the South Pacific nation over …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6354,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions\/6354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}