Former PM Rabuka not guilty of mutiny in 2000

Suva, Dec 11: A Fijian judge today found former Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka not guilty of inciting a bloody but failed mutiny in 2000, an upheaval which has been linked to last week's bloodless coup in the South Pacific nation.

Military chief Frank Bainimarama last week toppled democratically elected Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, claiming his government was corrupt and soft on those behind a May 2000 coup and the mutiny linked to it six months later.

Fiji has suffered four coups in 20 years.

Supreme Court Judge Gerard Winter acquitted Rabuka after a panel of five jurors, or assessors as they are known in Fiji, delivered a split verdict.

Winter said the prosecutor had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that Rabuka was guilty so he was forced to acquit the charismatic army chief, who led Fiji's first two coups in 1987.

''It is a great relief to be cleared from under a cloud of suspicion,'' Rabuka told Fiji radio outside the court in the old parliament building where, as an army colonel, he had staged his two coups.

Rabuka would have faced life in prison if found guilty. He was charged with inciting senior military officers to mutiny against Bainimarama at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks overlooking the capital, Suva, on November 2, 2000.

Bainimarama narrowly escaped the mutiny over a fence, fleeing into nearby bushes.

The mutiny was linked to the coup by armed indigenous nationalists in May 2000 which toppled the government of Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian leader.

REUTERS

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