MDC Youth Assembly leader Solomon Madzore and 28 others have been languishing in prison for over a year, accused of killing a police officer, Petros Mutedza, in Harare’s Glen View suburb on 29 March 2011.
The trial has been going in fits and starts – and did not take off last week as state lawyers were said to be engaged elsewhere. But a cursory look at the trial reveals that police officers have given conflicting statements and have admitted to not following proper police procedure when they arrested the 29 MDC activists.
Ben Justen, a CID officer, last week told the court that he did not manage to follow up on alibis given to him by the three accused people he had arrested.
“In my own capacity, I did not follow up on alibis given by the accused,” said Justen, who claimed he has been working for ZRP for 13 years. But this is a familiar script.
Judith Mutsingwa, a police officer, told the court that when they arrived at Glen View 3 shopping centre the place was teeming with activity with an assortment of people who varied from vendors to political activists. The fifth witness in the case, Asst Inspector Spencer Nyararayi, claimed that only MDC activists were at the shopping centre. State witnesses,who are for now all from the ZRP, also say they never went to Glen View 3 as part of the investigating team.
The witnesses also doubt that a proper identification parade was done after the arrest of the 29 activists. Evidence from previous state witnesses said that Mutedza had fallen hard on the tarmac when he tried to get into a motor vehicle, which sped off throwing him onto the ground. But Justen, who claimed to be part of the investigating team, said he was not aware of that incident.
The state, represented by prosecutor Edmore Nyazamba, alleges that MDC youth leader Solomon Madzore and 28 others murdered Insp Mutedza and is charging them with public violence and murder in a case that has lined up 20 witnesses.
However, during a bail hearing of the 29 recently, Mutedza’s brother and father exonerated the accused pointing fingers at Zanu (PF), which they said could have been behind the murder.
It is defence’s case that some of the accused are victims of profiling, when the state records all the details of known party activists in the area and picks them up on the basis of their political affiliation.
“They do this so that if there is any incident of a political nature in an area – the convenient and easy targets are the profiled activists in the area. So the police do not have to look further than their profile. With such an approach they avoid any complicated investigations,” the defence submitted earlier.
The defence has already vehemently argued that the state case will crumble because it substantially lacks evidence.
Post published in: News