Amnesty calls for jailed ex-Fiji PM's release

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Amnesty International has called for Fiji's former leader Laisenia Qarase to be freed from prison, accusing the country's military regime of using politically motivated charges to silence its critics.

Qarase, Fiji's last elected prime minister and ousted in a 2006 coup, was jailed for a year after being convicted earlier this month on corruption charges dating back to the early 1990s.

Amnesty's Pacific researcher Kate Schuetze said the 71-year-old was only one of a number of opposition figures brought before the courts in Fiji, which is due to hold its first elections since the coup in 2014.

"It appears that a number of people have been charged with criminal charges and that those charges are politically motivated," she told AFP from London in a telephone interview late Thursday.

"It does seem like there is a pattern and the concern is that freedom of expression is not being respected in Fiji."

Another former elected leader, Mahendra Chaudhry, who became Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister in 1999 but was deposed in a coup a year later, is due to stand trial on charges of breaching foreign exchange laws.

Schuetze said other government critics before the courts included trade union leader Daniel Urai, accused of sedition, and businesswoman Mere Samsoni, a grandmother in her 70s charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

In addition Akuila Yabaki, the head of non-government organisation the Citizens' Constitutional Forum, was charged with contempt of court in July over an article criticising Fiji's legal system.

Schuetze said the spate of charges was creating an oppressive atmosphere in Fiji as the country prepares a new constitution ahead of the 2014 vote.

"The point doesn't always have to be to get people convicted of criminal charges or sent to prison," she said.

"If the aim is to prevent people speaking out against the regime it seems to be having an effect whether they get the convictions or not."

Schuetze called for Qarase's unconditional release and said charges against other opposition figures should be reviewed and dropped if they were found to be politically motivated.