The case of murdered Canadian teenager Rebecca Middleton took a bizarre twist yesterday when the man already convicted of being an accessory to the killing faced a fresh charge of murder.

Jamaican national Kirk Mundy, 22, appeared before Senior Magistrate Will Francis in Magistrates' Court yesterday afternoon.

Wearing a regulation orange prison uniform and flanked by a mass of prison guards, Mundy sat emotionless as the new charge was read out to him.

The dead girl's family, who expressed outrage when Mundy was originally sentenced for the minor offence of being an accessory, said they were not surprised at the news.

Speaking from the family home in Belleville, Ontario, Rebecca's father, David Middleton, told The Royal Gazette : "The delay has been frustrating but we would like to see justice.

"It's important that everything is done right and that the legal system doesn't have any loopholes.'' But after the brief court appearance, defence attorneys Mark Pettingill and Archie Warner argued that the new charge was an abuse of legal process.

And they claimed that two separate informations could not be produced on the same defendant.

Mr. Pettingill, representing Mundy, described the new charge as a possible "international embarrassment'' for the Attorney General.

"It's an abuse of process,'' he said.

"We have a system that's in place and what we have is an individual who has been charged and convicted with regard to a crime and is serving a sentence and suddenly, out of the blue 18 months down the road that same individual is brought back to court and re-charged in conjunction with someone else.

"The mind boggles how this can be done and I think that this case is probably going to be something of an international embarrassment for the Attorney General's chambers. It's a fundamental abuse of our system.'' The new development means the trial of Justis Smith, scheduled to take place next month, could now be delayed.

Smith, 18 -- charged with the killing last year -- was also in court and had the same charge read to him. Mundy and Smith were remanded in custody until Monday afternoon.

Mundy was originally given a five-year prison sentence in October, 1996, after pleading guilty to being an accessory to the brutal killing.

At his trial the court was told how Mundy and Smith picked up 17-year-old Ms Middleton in the early hours of July 3, 1996 as she waited with a friend for a taxi on Mullet Bay Road, St. George's.

Her semi-naked body was discovered in a pool of blood on Ferry Reach Road later that morning. She had been sexually assualted and suffered multiple stab wounds to her neck and chest.

But Mundy claimed that Smith alone had been responsible for the slaying -- a fact which the Crown accepted.