Daily News bombers named in secret docs

The documents, which appear to be authentic, implicate the CIO, several top government officials and a private Zimbabwean company run by former ZNA officers in the bombing – which was swept under the carpet by the Zimbabwe Republic Police at the time, despite an elaborate pretence of searching for the perpetrators.
The documents, headed ‘Operation Media: Daily News’, are currently being analysed by a number of experts to determine their authenticity.
“If these documents are found to be genuine we will hand them over to the Zimbabwean police to assist them in their investigations into the bombing,” said the paper’s editor Wilf Mbanga from London this week.
Interviewed at a secret location, the former CIO officer who leaked the documents said: “The whole exercise was carried out by 16 people. The private company had five men who acted as instructors while the crack intelligence team, which comprised people from the army and the secret service, had six and the other four were consultants,” he said.
The five men and the six-member counter-intelligence team are named in the documents, as is the senior CIO operative, based in Kwe Kwe at the time, tasked with carrying out the bombing.
Shortly after the documents were leaked to The Zimbabwean, the editorial office in the UK received an anonymous, threatening telephone call warning us not to publish the story.
“The security details were placed under surveillance for about three hours before they climbed the security wall. They then manhandled the personal at gun-point while others moved in and installed bombs on every printing machine. The operation took less than the 15 minutes they had been allocated. They drove away in two unmarked Mazda vehicles and then detonated,” reads part of the document.
“The crack counter-intelligence team is expert in covert operations, highly trained in special weapons and tactics, first response assaults and tactics, special intelligence gathering, weapon handling, urban counter intelligence, snipping and counter (pinpoint accuracy), sabotage technology and in depth interrogation,” explained the CIO operative.
After the 2001 bombing, The Daily News together with its sister paper, The Daily News on Sunday were finally shut down by the government under the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). – Don’t miss next week’s issue of The Zimbabwean when we will expose secrets behind the killing of the MDC’s secretary for information and MP for Kuwadzana, Learnmore Jongwe.