CIO must answer to Parly – Biti

The CIO, housed in the President’s Office, operates without accountability to anyone other than to President Robert Mugabe. Its expenditure is not subject to scrutiny by the comptroller or the auditor general and its budget is a murky affair.

Biti said the MDC would soon table legislation that will make the organisation accountable to the public because it was chewing public money.

Biti said the CIO had committed acts of despicable atrocities and must be held to account.

The CIO must be regulated by an Act of Parliament which will ensure that its operatives do not act unlawfully and remain scot-free,” Biti told the MDC congress in Bulawayo. “We want the victims of the CIOs brutal acts to be able to take them to court to answer for their heinous acts. It is sad that Zanu (PF) is refusing to implement the issue.

Biti said CIO operatives had been assigned to a myriad of commissions formed under the GNU and to government departments, where they have spied on honest hard-working people.

The spy agency was also complicit in electoral fraud and the ZEC was stuffed with CIO members. “That must stop now,” he said, adding that the new electoral commission must be rid of all CIO operatives.

Biti said the roadmap to a fresh vote must ensure that all CIO operatives are weeded out of the ZEC, saying they were the main culprits in terms of electoral fraud.

Revelations from the members of the public are that the CIOs are the most reviled arm of the security sector because their operations are clandestine and they are believed to have secretly unleashed terror campaigns on numerous political opponents of Zanu (PF) during election periods, said Biti.

The MDC secretary-general, who is also one of six negotiators who drafted the global political agreement, said despite resistance, there was need to push for security sector reforms to ensure a smooth transition of power.