Former Fiji PM Rabuka in court on mutiny charges

SUVA, Fiji, May 12 (Reuters) Sitiveni Rabuka, a former coup leader and army colonel who became Fiji's elected prime minister, has been charged with inciting a bloody army mutiny in 2000 in which eight soldiers died, police said today.

Rabuka, the former chief of Fiji's military who led two coups in 1987, was due to appear in court in the capital Suva early on Friday.

''He has been formally charged with inciting mutiny,'' a police spokesman said.

Rabuka was charged late yesterday after a joint investigation by police and the military, local radio reported.

The November 2000 mutiny came six months after armed nationalists toppled the elected, multiracial government of Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian leader, in another coup.

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