HARARE - A Nyanga magistrate has granted the spokesman for Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC party leave to challenge in the Supreme Court the constitutionality of Section 121 subsection (3) of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act (CPEA). The draconian piece of legislation has been abused by State prosecutors to keep an accused person in jail for seven days, even after bail has been granted.
Douglas Mwonzora, the partys new spokesman, appeared this week in Nyanga Magistrates Court for a determination on a petition he filed challenging the use of the Section to keep him in jail after his February 21 arrest together with 24 MDC activists after they were granted $50 bail each.
The applicants want the Supreme Court, in terms of Section 24 (2) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, to declare that their fundamental rights, provided for in the Constitution of Zimbabwe, and other international human rights instruments to which Zimbabwe is a state party, have been violated. They are represented by Jeremiah Bamu of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.
The application also wants the Supreme Court to determine whether or not the failure by the police to apprehend the persons who abducted and assaulted and tortured the applicants denied the applicants’ protection of law and whether or not the discretion to arrest in itself was improperly exercised, with the result that the applicants were unduly deprived of their right to liberty.
It asks the Supreme Court to declare their assault, torture and denial of medical attention while in police custody inhuman and degrading treatment and to open a full scale probe on complaints raised by the accused at their initial remand hearing.
The MDC spokesman and his co-accused were arrested on February 21 following a well attended rally in his constituency that was disrupted by “Zanu (PF) thugs.” Mwonzora’s supporters and the Zanu (PF) youths clashed, with a stand-off causing a trail of destruction and damaged property.
Mwonzora reported the matter at Nyamaropa Police Station but police allegedly charged the complainants. Mwonzora alleges he was brutalised in police custody together with his co-accused. One of them 82-year-old Rwisai Nyakauru tragically died soon after his release from remand prison.
The battered MDC activists and their MP were dragged to court. And after their freedom was denied during their initial remand hearing following the invocation of the CPEA, Mwonzora and the 23 other MDC members appealed to the High Court.
They were only released from Remand Prison after the High Court granted them US$50 bail each on March 11. They were then ordered to report to the police once a week, until their next remand date. Mwonzora’s reporting conditions have been scrapped.
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