MUTARE MDC-T Member of Parliament for Musikavanhu Prosper Mutseyami of two counts of assault, to join a growing list of senior activists and officials of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirais party cleared of various charges by the courts in recent weeks. The state had alleged that Musikavanhu last February punched two Zanu (PF) supporters, Hapson Musungo and Elisha Chikukwa, during an altercation at a rural business centre in Chimanimani district in Manicaland province.
Mutseyami was jointly charged with a fellow MDC-T supporter Watson Munyocha who confessed to the crime. But Mutseyami’s lawyer Langton Mhungu applied for acquittal of his client telling the court that the fact that Munyocha confessed to the crime did not necessarily mean that the legislator was guilty.
Mhungu said despite the confession the state was still required to submit evidence to court to back the charges against Mutseyami, a requirement the defence lawyer said the state had failed to do. “The state failed dismally to advance anything near a prima facie case because the evidence adduced on behalf of the state by the co-accused was so manifestly unreliable that no reasonable court could safely act on it,” Mhungu said.
The MDC-T accuses hardliners within President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party of using the police and army of ordering the arrest of its MPs in a bid to reduce their numbers in Parliament.
Other MDC-T MPs who have been arrested on various charges and later cleared by the courts include Trevor Saruwaka (Mutasa Central), Lynnette Karenyi (Chimanimani West), Shuwa Mudiwa (Mutare West), Meki Makuyana (Chipinge South) and Mathias Mlambo, the MP for Chipinge East. The partys treasurer and candidate for the post of deputy agriculture minister Roy Bennett will return to court next January to on charges of plotting to commit treason charges he denies and which the MDC-T says are politically motivated.
Post published in: News