THE Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) has said Attorney General Abyud Shonga acted within the law when he rejected calls to appeal against the London High court verdict that found second Republican president Frederick Chiluba liable for the loss of US$46 million.

LAZ president Stephen Lungu said article 45 of the constitution makes the Attorney General immune to any authority outside the constitution.

In an interview in Lusaka yesterday, Mr Lungu said the action by LAZ to propose that the Attorney General should appeal against the verdict was done with the full conscience that he only draws his authority from the law.

Mr Lungu said the Attorney General only acted on instructions from clients who were the government on matters of such nature and that the decision to appeal any case rested with the provisions of the constitution.

The Attorney General had since responded to the letter in which LAZ asked him to appeal and that LAZ would be writing soon to state its final position on the matter.

Mr Lungu said LAZ did not intend to question the authority of the attorney general and would ensure that the credibility of the Judiciary was protected by cautioning lawyers who were in the habit of attacking the Judiciary.

LAZ also did not intend to attack the Judiciary when it wrote a letter to the Attorney General proposing that he appealed.

LAZ was at liberty to express its opinion on judgments and the same liberty extends to individual lawyers.

Mr Lungu said LAZ was not selective in the manner in which it had warned some lawyers such as Rodger Chongwe but that others had not been written to after assessing and concluding that they were merely expressing their opinion on the judgment.

Mr Lungu said the action to write Mr Chongwe was well grounded because the article that he quoted clearly questioned the caliber of the judiciary, which LAZ would not tolerate.

Among the lawyers who were found to have expressed their opinion on the judgment by High Court Evans Hamaundu was Patriotic Front secretary general Wynter Kabimba.

He said LAZ would be making its position known when the Attorney General's letter responding to the association's position was considered in detail but what was clear was that his actions were within the law.

This is in a matter in which the Government had sought to register and enforce the London judgment in Zambia in which Dr Chiluba and seven others were tried in absentia before Judge Peter Smith.

Dr Chiluba and his co-accused refused to comply with the court process and contested that they could not be tried by a foreign jurisdiction.