Coup Leader Gets Death Sentence, Asks for Mercy
Lawyers for George Speight, who was sentenced to death for staging a coup in Fiji nearly two years ago, have asked President Josefa Iloilo for mercy.
Iloilo can commute Speight’s sentence to life in prison or pardon him.
Speight and his armed nationalists stormed Parliament in May 2000, claiming that ethnic Indians were undermining indigenous Fijian rights, and seized then-Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.
Former Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who staged two coups in 1987 when he was head of the military, was pardoned by Fiji’s president at the time.
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