Financial Gazette (Harare)
Clemence Manyukwe
9 August 2007
Harare — A GOVERNMENT doctor has revealed in court that a group of alleged coup plotters was tortured in custody.
The alleged coup plotters appeared in public for the first time this week, in remand hearings at the Harare Magistrate's Court.
A medical officer at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison Complex Hospital, identified only as Dr Toungana, presented a report on the condition of the suspects, two months after the group alleged vicious assaults by the police.
Albert Matapo, the alleged ringleader of the seven men facing allegations of having plotted to oust President Robert Mugabe and replace him with Rural Housing and Social Amenities Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, has multiple scars on his back and whip lashes on both knees, according to the report.
Another accused, Patson Mupfure, was said to have lost his upper incisor tooth.
Part of the medical report says Mupfure has a "healed scar (on) right wrist, back of thighs and lower limbs...He is in a stable condition. The only permanent injury is the missing tooth."
On another accused person, Nyasha Zivuku the report said: "Scar on back. Thoracic region, 1cm diameter. Multiple scars on lower limbs."
Meanwhile, the state yesterday made an application before the magistrate that a defence application be heard in camera.
Prosecutor Joseph Makwakwa said proceedings should be held in camera because there were people who would be mentioned, and that their identities must not be divulged in public.
Makwakwa argued this was because the country does not have any witness protection programme.
However, the defence team, led by prominent lawyer Jonathan Samkange, opposed the application, saying his clients do not want to be acquitted in secrecy, as the public would be left with the impression, created by the state, that the group had indeed intended to overthrow the government.
Samkange added that although the state had during a bail hearing in June at the High Court made a similar claim that there were some prominent names that needed protection, no individual had yet been named.
The court is yet to rule on the application.
On Thursday last week, the seven men made their first public appearance. Looking dishevelled but smiling and waving to relatives, the group sat quietly -- cuffed and in leg irons -- as Samkange challenged the state to show why the seven should remain in custody.
Pointing to one of the suspects, 20-year-old Shingirai Mutemachani, Samkange said: "I want the state to tell me why this young boy should be kept in custody, in leg-irons. What would he do if he were released today? Take over the country? What would he do with it?"
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