Fiji's former prime minister Frank Bainimarama has been sentenced to one year in jail after being convicted of perverting the course of justice.
Bainimarama, who led Fiji for 16 years, faced the country's High Court in the capital Suva on Thursday.
The conviction relates to Bainimarama's role in influencing a police investigation into funding of the region's biggest university, the University of the South Pacific, in 2019.
The courtroom went silent after the sentence was read out, with Bainimarama later being led out in handcuffs, surrounded by police, and into a waiting police van.
He did not react after the sentence was read out, but his wife, who was sitting by his side, broke down in tears.
Bainimarama's legal team indicated it will appeal after its attempt to have the former prime minister receive bail was rejected by the High Court.
There was a heavy police presence in and outside the court, with increased security across Fiji's capital on Thursday.
Outside court, a small number of supporters sang a hymn as Bainimarama, who still commands strong support in sections of the community, emerged from the building.
Thursday's conviction is just one in a string of charges the former military coup leader is facing after he was ousted from office in the December 2022 general elections.
Back and forth in court
Bainimarama was sentenced along with Sitiveni Qiliho, his former police commissioner during his final years in power.
Both men were found guilty of directing police to halt investigations into financial mismanagement at the university in 2019.
The university had filed complaints to state criminal investigators, alleging that mismanagement and abuse of funds had occurred over 10 years.
Bainimarama and Qiliho both pleaded not guilty and escaped conviction last year in the Magistrates Court when it ruled there was insufficient evidence to convict them.
The case bounced back and forth between the courts, and on Thursday both were sentenced, with Qiliho receiving a two-year jail term.
A towering figure in Fiji
Bainimarama has loomed large over Fiji for much of the past two decades.
The navy man rose up the ranks of the Fiji military through the 1990s, before becoming its commander and leading a 2006 coup.
He took a stranglehold on power and led Fiji with an iron fist for almost 16 years. But it was a leadership shrouded in controversy.
Bainimarama clashed frequently with Australia after seizing power.
Australia and New Zealand put travel bans and sanctions on him and other senior officials, and in turn, he placed similar travel restrictions on his opposite numbers, former prime ministers John Howard and Helen Clarke.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd described Fiji in 2009 as becoming "virtually a military dictatorship".
Even as Australia and New Zealand later moved to normalise relations with Bainimarama, tensions remained.
Despite repeated calls for Bainimarama to stand down and let a civilian prime minister to take over, he remained in power.
In Fiji's first post-coup elections in 2014, his FijiFirst Party won a clear majority and he went on to be lauded overseas for his push for stronger action on climate change.
Bainimarama was also influential in modernising Fiji's economy and supporting its now world-renowned tourism industry.
He had strong support in some sections of the country, but others lamented the heavy restrictions on civil liberties in Fiji and he faced continued accusations of corruption and government-backed impropriety.
Government organisations and even businesses were controlled with an iron fist, and representatives of the media were controlled, imprisoned, and in some cases, encountered violence.
He lost the December 2022 election to Sitiveni Rabuka, triggering some Fijians to celebrate what they saw as a new dawn for the country.
But he did not go down quietly. Last year he was thrown out of Fiji's parliament and suspended for three years after delivering a divisive speech.
His supporters have labelled the court cases involving the former prime minister a political witch hunt, but the Rabuka government has insisted the various investigations involving Bainimarama are independent of government.
Additional reporting by
