The High Court has halted PHD leader Walter Magaya's criminal trial, pending a review of a magistrate's earlier ruling.
Justice Tawanda Chitapi halted the trial following an urgent chamber application by Magaya's legal team--Admire Rubaya, Everson Chatambudza, and Panashe Chivhenge.
Magaya is challenging Regional Magistrate Esthere Chivasa's decision to move his rape trial to a Victim Friendly Court (VFC), arguing that this issue must be resolved before the trial proceeds.
Magaya want the High Court to review the decision and also seek the removal of the presiding magistrate Ms Estere Chivasa from the case and to have it start before a different magistrate in an open court.
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He argued that trial in the VFC would infringe his rights and used it as a basis to have the matter referred to the Constitutional Court.
Magistrate Chivasa who presided over Magaya's trial at the same time the High Court was hearing the urgent chamber application.
Chivasa proceeded to deliver the ruling notwithstanding protestations from Magaya's other lawyer Malvern Mapako and dismissed the application for referral to the apex court giving way for the trial to start.
The High Court however put the matter on hold until the review is heard on May 14 after Magaya's lawyers filed an urgent application to have the matter stopped until the review is heard.
In his urgent application, Magaya citing the magistrate Estere Chivasa as the first respondent and the Prosecutor General as the second respondent, he argued that the court's reasoning was not legally sound as it was based on the mere say so of the prosecutor without independent verification from the alleged victims.
He took issue with the State of the victim friendly court which he said would compromise the trial.
"The Respondent (magistrate Chivasa) openly confessed to relying on the State Outline -- a document of mere allegations -- and to "believing" the State Counsel's word, without independent verification, without interviewing the witnesses herself, and without any evidentiary foundation.
"This is the flimsy basis upon which the 1st Respondent ordered that my trial be held in a Victim Friendly Court.
"So the Respondent merely believed the mere say-so of State Counsel in making a decision that fundamentally altered the course of my trial? That is not adjudication; that is abdication.
"lt is shocking - profoundly disturbing, constitutionally reckless, and a grave miscarriage of justice. To describe it as astonishing would be an understatement, it is a judicial collapse into blind faith," the application read.
In the review application, Magaya seeks the court to declare the magistrate's decision null and void and that the trial be heard in an open court and before a different magistrate.
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