Zimbabwe: Jestina Mukoko Disappears Again!
As I suspected and said in my post below, the police have simply ignored the High Court order to release Jestina Mukoko and her fellow abductees into a private clinic in Harare.
It appears that the mischievous dictator has simply disappeared the whole lot of them again! The order was issued at 9p.m. yesterday. This morning, before the cocks could even crow, the abductees were bundled into the same red VW van that they came to court in and whisked away under heavy police guard. Nobody knows whence they went.
As Mtetwa told Reuters, even the government's own investigating officer was stunned to hear that they had disappeared again. He does not know where they are as well, which makes his job description rather redundant.
Beatrice Mtetwa, the lawyer for Mukoko and other detained activists, says, "The long and short of it is that the police haven't complied with the High Court order. I doubt if they will comply."
"I have just received information that they were taken by a red vehicle under armed police escort. The investigating officer expressed shock and surprise when I asked him," Mtetwa told Reuters.
The other activists had been held in police cells around the capital Harare and their status could not immediately be established.
Mukoko, a former newscaster who headed the Zimbabwe Peace Project, was picked up at gunpoint in Harare on December 3. If tried and found guilty the activists could have faced the death penalty, lawyers said.
This of course, should come as no surprise. As I say in the post below, Mugabe is well known for ignoring his own courts. Then he wonders why the world says there is no rule of law in Zimbabwe! The order to ignore the court ruling would have come from Mugabe himself, as is normally the case, with the judge being told to get in touch with the "president" if he has any problems with this. Of course, no judge has ever tried that.
And still I ask what sort of solidarity this is from SADC, when they can not even speak up for due process to be followed and the laws and courts of Zimbabwe to be respected. Mugabe is setting a bad precedent here.
There are erronous reports out there that she has been released, mostly on online media and these are taking their cue from The Herald, which simply reported on the court order. Of course, this comes in the wake of desperate lies being propagated by media not based in Zimbabwe, getting information third or fourth hand. (There was even one media that reported during Mukoko's disappearance that she was being held in a house in Kariba!!! And of course, the quick jumping of the gun when several online media erronously but confidently "exposed" the man behind the operation.
vaMagora is this woman innocent or not, you seem to know a bit re events beyond most of us. is she clean
ReplyDeleteI expect she is. This investigation started a long while back, with the arrests of those 15 or so MDC people. It was weeks before they came back for Jestina.
ReplyDeleteIf she had been guilty, she would have had the means and the wits to flee the country and stay out there. As it is,they had to drag her out of her own bed in her own home, caught completely by surprise. That does not say guilty to me.
so why did they go for her and not some other fellows who are known in harare to be running safe houses as well as collecting evidence of misdeeds, what is it about her that has got her where she is
ReplyDelete@anonymous: they think they have, through her, a trail that will lead directly to Tsvangirai or Tendai Biti.
ReplyDeleteIt is about how far it can all be credibly taken. What litle charges we heard on Wednesday in court are nothing compared to what the mass prosecutions will bring out in terms of allegations.
i was amazed to see that they all did not show obvious evidence of torture, how do the agents manage to do that
ReplyDelete@Anonymous - I was hoping a reader would answer "how do the agents do that?"
ReplyDeleteWell, activists will tell you that there are several ways in which "they do that." People are routinely beaten under their feet, that's one way. But they would have been limping....
There is also psychological torture: just as we all feared these people would be dead, so do they: so fake drownings, hoods on the head, sleep deprivation and so on can take their toll.
How these guys have been "heavily tortured.." as claimed I honestly can not tell you, but psychologically, there is no need that are being tortured.
You are doing great work in exposing the dictator that is mugabe Mr Magora. Thank you.
ReplyDelete