SUVA (Pacnews) — The Australian officer in charge of the Fijian police force in the lead-up to the December coup has been accused of attempting to undermine military chief Frank Bainimarama by linking him to the deaths of five soldiers.
Commodore Bainimarama said he was “totally unaware” of any investigation by Andrew Hughes, who had been seconded to the force from the Australian Federal Police but fled Fiji amid threats against him.
Claims aired by Hughes focused on the Fijian military ruler’s role in the deaths of five rebel soldiers who were beaten after a mutiny on Nov. 2, 2000.
“Andrew Hughes came up with these allegations only when he was put in a corner about two weeks before we kicked him out,” Bainimarama told the Australian newspaper. “Never at any stage has any policeman, including Andrew Hughes, come to me and said, ‘we are doing an investigation into the deaths of those people in 2000.’ ”
Hughes and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer made the accusation in the immediate aftermath of the Dec. 5 takeover.
Eight soldiers were killed when members of the Fiji military’s Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit tried to storm the Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Suva.
Three loyalist troops died in the attack, during which an attempt was made to kill Bainimarama, who scampered to safety down a gully under a hail of gunfire. Five rebel troops were later killed, reportedly beaten to death by colleagues of the dead soldiers.
The military chief denied killing anyone or ordering anyone be killed.
Asked to explain how the counter revolutionary troops died, Bainimarama said: “I think they were just bashed up by the (loyalist) soldiers because they got pretty peeved off. I think that’s an understatement. You know, they’d been part of the military for 10, 20 years and all of a sudden one day they turned around and shot people up. Do you expect our guys to go and kiss them on the cheek? Let’s be real about the situation.”
He added: “These guys came to kill people...so if they died in the process I’m not going to cry over it. We class them as terrorists.”