Three men were jailed for life in Fiji today for murdering a police officer and a soldier in the first convictions related to violence and unrest that followed a nationalist coup in May 2000.
A gang of five men, including three escaped convicts, ambushed a group of nine police and soldiers on August 8, 2000, at Sawani, in the hills 12 kms outside of the capital Suva in the racially-split South Pacific nation.
Police Corporal Raj Kumar, 36, and Private Joela Waleilakeba, 31, from the Fijian army were killed in the shootout and four others injured.
Semesa Roko, 42, and Leone Lautabui, 33, both convicted armed robbers who escaped from jail in a mass breakout on July 28, and rebel army soldier Jonasa Tonawai, 30, were arrested several weeks later and charged with murder. All pleaded not guilty.
Fellow escaped criminal Ali Fereti, 37, was killed in a shootout as police tried to arrest him and the fifth gang member, Jolame Tukuna, turned state witness and was not charged.
A seven week trial at Fiji's High Court heard that the ambush was planned to retaliate for the army moving coup plotter George Speight and his supporters on from a primary school in Suva where they moved after leaving Fiji's parliament, the scene of the coup.
Speight, a failed businessman, stormed parliament with a group of armed nationalists on May 19, 2000, toppling the government of Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister.
Justice Nashat Shameen said the three men had plenty of opportunities to back out of the ambush which was led by Fereti, one of Fiji's most notorious criminals.
"The action showed careless and cold-blooded murder," Shameen told the court as she sentenced the trio to life imprisonment.