2 Mar 2005

Police treat Fiji death threat as serious

9:53 pm on 2 March 2005

Fiji police say they are treating a threat to assassinate the Labour Party leader, Mahendra Chaudhry, seriously.

The police spokesperson, Inspector Unaisi Vuniwaqa, has told Radio Legend the threat was made in a telephone call to the Nasinu police station on Sunday night.

She says adequate security measures were taken immediately to protect Mr Chaudhry.

Inspector Vuniwaqa says a special investigation team is now working on the case.

She says the person making the call only identified himself as Tony and said there was a group planning to assassinate Mr Chaudhry.

But she says they are having difficulty locating where the call was made from because they do not have equipment in place to trace the origins of calls.

Labour MP Poseci Bune had claimed in January that they had received information of a plot to assassinate Mr Chaudhry and other party executives.

But the Labour Party did not report the matter to the police.

The police commissioner, Andrew Hughes had said at that time that it was an attempt by politicians to gain political mileage.