Bhunu postponed delivering a ruling on the accused’s application for discharge at the close of the case since defence lawyers had not filed written submissions with the High Court.
The 29 accused’s defence lawyer Gift Mtisi told The Zimbabwean in Harare today that the ruling has been postponed to a date yet to be decided.
“Justice Bhunu postponed the ruling since we as the defence had not yet submitted our submissions for our clients to be discharged at the close of the case,” said Mtisi.
Mtisi said the postponement would give his team enough time to analyse volumes of evidence which was still to be transcribed and come up with informed submissions.
Justice Bhunu was expected to deliver the ruling today on the understanding that the defence would have made its submissions by today as agreed at the last appearance at his Chambers.
The defence lawyers last month indicated that the state had failed to prove a case against their clients after all the witnesses had given evidence in court.
The case has since been closed after the last witness, a Cuban pathologist Alveiro Gonzalez who carried out a post-mortem on Mutedza’s body gave evidence.
The post-mortem indicated that injuries on Mutedza’s body were consistent with a blow from a hard object. He was killed in the Glen View area when a police detail he was leading came under attack.
Lawyers representing the MDC-T activists maintain that those arrested were never anywhere near the scene of the attack.
Twenty four of the 29 MDC-T activists were granted bail early this year but five others are still in custody. The five are Tungamirai Madzokere, Yvonne Musarurwa, Rebecca Mafukeni, Last Maengahama and Simon Mapanzure.
MDC-T says the suspects are victims of political victimisation by Zanu (PF) through its partisan police.
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