SW Radio Africa (London)
Violet Gonda
16 February 2009
Roy Bennett is no stranger to Zimbabwe's prisons. In 2004 he spent eight months in jail for pushing Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa in parliament, after being provoked and verbally abused. Now the MDC Treasurer General and Deputy Minister of Agriculture designate has just spent his 52nd birthday in a Mutare police cell, facing charges of plotting to destabilise the Mugabe regime.
His lawyer Trust Maanda, said the MDC official who was arrested last Friday, is being accused of 'funding the acquisition of firearms for purposes of committing insurgency, banditry, terrorism and sabotage'. It is alleged he conspired with Peter Hitschmann to use the firearms to damage essential services, in order to destabilise the government.
Bennett completely denies the charges, saying they are motivated purely by politics.
The MDC official was supposed to appear in court on Monday but the Attorney General's office said it was sending a prosecutor from Harare, despite the fact that the State could have provided a prosecutor from Mutare. Maanda believes this is in order to have someone who is politically savvy.
It is not clear when the MDC official will be released and the lawyer said the State does not appear to be in a hurry. The police applied, and were granted, a warrant of further detention on Monday.
As a Deputy Minister Bennett is supposed to be sworn into the new inclusive government this week.
Ironically, while Bennett is facing these 'insurgency' charges, several MDC officials, including the new Home Affairs Minister Giles Mutsekwa, were acquitted of the same charges when the allegations were made in 2006.
And although Hitschmann was found guilty and jailed for three years for possessing unregistered firearms, he was also acquitted of being in possession of firearms to threaten the Mugabe regime.
Maanda said: "It boggles the mind how the same weapons which were involved in that case can now be said to be having been for purposes of banditry by Roy Bennett, especially as those who were alleged to have taken part were acquitted."
The lawyer said Bennett's incarceration does not bode well for the unity government and that it shows that ZANU PF did not enter into the unity government agreement with sincerity.
As usual the regional body SADC, who are guarantors of the power sharing deal, have been completely silent, in spite of the fact that Bennett was arrested on the day the head of SADC and South African President Kgalema Motlanthe was in Harare. Furthermore scores of political detainees, all facing spurious charges, are still in jail despite numerous appeals by the new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai for their release.
Seven detainees were supposed to be brought to court on Monday for their repeal remand and to get a trial date set, but they did not appear as once again prison authorities claimed they had no fuel to take them to court.
The State did however have fuel to transport Bennett from one police station after another on Friday. In the course of the day Bennett was moved from Charles Prince airport just outside Harare, to Goromonzi, then to Marondera police station and finally to Mutare. Perhaps that is where all the fuel went?
But the State could not transport freelance photojournalist Anderson Shadreck Manyere and six MDC activists, the short distance from Chikurubi prison to the Magistrates' court in Harare.
The magistrate postponed the remand proceedings of the seven to Wednesday. They are facing allegations of banditry, sabotage and terrorism.
Meanwhile, the Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, Jestina Mukoko, Tsvangirai's former aide Ghandi Mudzingwa and 72 year old MDC activist Fidelis Chiramba were finally hospitalised on Friday night after a Harare Magistrate ruled they should be 'detained' in hospital, following doctors' recommendations.
One of their lawyers, Charles Kwaramba, said the three are in a critical condition. Despite their physical weakness they are under armed guard at the Avenues Clinic.
He said ideally all political detainees should be receiving treatment as a result of the torture they were subjected to by members of the Central Intelligence Organisation, but the State continues to block attempts to have them all hospitalised.
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