Gwisai and the other economic justice and human rights activists are facing charges of conspiracy to commit public violence or alternatively inciting public violence and participating in a gathering with the intention to promote public violence, breach of peace or bigotry.
They were intially charged with plotting to unseat the government through popular revolts similar to those witnessed in Egypt and Tunisia.
Gwisai, a labour law lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, is the International Socialist Organisation general-coordinator for the local chapter.
Gwisai and 44 activists were arrested in February after police pounced on them as they watched television footage of popular uprisings that ousted long-serving dictators in Egypt and Tunisia.
However, 39 of the activists, including HIV and AIDS campaigners, were freed by Harare Magistrate Munamato Mutevedzi who ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove a case against them.
This left Gwisai, anti-debt campaigner Hopewell Gumbo, student leader Welcome Zimuto, Antonater Choto, Tatenda Mombeyarara and Eddson Chakuma facing the revised charges.
The six activists, who spent almost a month in prison before the High Court granted them bail, appeared before regional magistrate Munamato Mutevedzi. He deferred the case to today.
The arrest of the activists in February drew wide international condemnation of President Robert Mugabe’s government. The denunciation worsened after the activists claimed that they had been tortured while in police cells.
The activists have denied the charges and say they were arrested while attending a democracy and constitutionalism lecture at the ISO offices in Harare.
Post published in: News