Lawyers of former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho will be filing an appeal against the conviction.
Speaking to FijiLive, lawyer Devanesh Sharma said the defence did not agree with the decision passed by Acting Chief Justice, Salesi Temo and believed that the learned Magistrate had applied the right provisions of the Penalties and Sentencing Act.
Sharma said they wished that the decision today would have been a suspended one; however, the sentence delivered was the lower end of the act.
He said they will make an application for bail pending appeal.
“We have a lot of options, but the focus is defence’s appeal on the conviction delivered today. The other is a suspension of the sentence. This is exactly what we are going to do.”
“We will take our chances in Court.”
“At the end of the day as lawyers, we respect that this is a process – We have the right to appeal on behalf of our clients… But I think it is important to leave these issues to another forum.”
“Everyone has their views about what has happened and at the end of the day, let’s respect it, the court has spoken and we will exercise our rights to take it further,” Sharma said.
He said that both Bainimarama and Qiliho are tough having faced tougher situations in the past.
“In the end you have one that serves 12 months while the other serves 24-month prison sentence and under the law, if you serve two-thirds of the sentence, you can apply for early release.”
