Fiji officer on trial for plotting coup: reports

A former Fiji army chief has been put on trial for plotting a coup against the Pacific nation's military regime, including plans to assassinate the attorney-general, reports said today.
Former Land Force commander Pita Driti is facing charges of inciting mutiny and sedition in the High Court in the capital Suva over the 2010 plan to overthrow military strongman Voreqe Bainimarama, the Fiji Times reported.
It said Driti told fellow officers he had lost faith in Bainimarama, who himself gained power in a 2006 coup that toppled a democratically elected government.
Prosecution witness Lieutenant-Colonel Manasa Tagicakibau said that in October 2010 he was in charge of army logistics, including surveillance, when Driti approached him seeking support for the plan.

Tagicakibau said Driti complained that Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, widely seen as Bainimarama's number two, had too much influence on the military leader and should be killed.
He allegedly wanted to depose Bainimarama in October 2010 while he was in Sudan visiting Fijian troops serving as UN peacekeepers.

Tagicakibau said he and two other officers blew the whistle on the plot just before Bainimarama's scheduled departure for Sudan, the Fijivillage news website reported.
Driti was subsequently arrested and an alleged co-conspirator, Lieutenant-Colonel Tevita Mara, fled to neighbouring Tonga, where he has ties to the aristocratic elite.
Fiji has experienced four coups since the mid-1980s, largely stemming from tensions between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians brought over by Britain in the colonial era to work on sugar plantations.

In 2010, group of eight men, including military officers and a tribal chief, were convicted of plotting to kill Bainimarama in 2007 and received sentences ranging from three to seven years.