supporters cheered and danced outside the colonial-style courthouse in the capital, Harare, after Magistrate Gloria Takundwa announced the verdict.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said the string of acquittals shows the MDC has been vindicated and hopefully this would set the stage for “national reconciliation” of Zimbabwe’s political crisis.
But Home Affairs minister Kembo Mohadi, who had barred the release of the MDC supporters through ministerial certificates, said the activists had been wrongly acquitted and that the government might seek recourse to other legal measures. He gave no specifics.
The acquittal of the six brings to 18 out of 32, the number of MDC activists vindicated on trumped up terror charges.
The State case was that the six gathered at Stodart Hall in Mbare armed with four petrol bombs, a hand grenade and an anti-riot tear gas canister on March 27 this year.
The State further alleged that the group proceeded to bomb the Joshua Nkomo Zanu (PF) district office in Mbare with the ammunition, injuring seven occupants and destroying property worth Z$4,5 million.
In her verdict, Magistrate Takundwa said the state had shamelessly failed to prosecute and successively failed to provide the six with a trial date.
Six other activists – including journalist and MDC press officer Luke Tamborinyoka – were released a week earlier. They were facing charges of receiving military training in South Africa. The State withdrew the case after it crumbled in court like a deck of cards.
That same week, Glen View MP Paul Madzore, his sibling Solomon, and 10 other activists were acquitted on allegations of firebombing police stations. The case was withdrawn before plea.
Many here, including opposition supporters, had been braced for a guilty verdict.
Zanu (PF)-aligned church leaders immediately said they hoped the acquittal presaged a more democratic path for Zimbabwe.
But political analysts in Harare said they foresaw no change in Mugabe’s systematic efforts to silence political opponents and the press, citing the confiscation of opposition leader Arthur Mutambara’s passport weekend.
Some said they believed that the verdict was politically motivated and showed only that Mugabe had decided that the cost of convicting his biggest challengers without evidence, and in the glare of an international spotlight, was too great.