Lawyer discloses details of Bake torture

By Lance Guma
04 April 2007

Gory details of how Raymond Bake, the coordinator for ward 34 in the Combined Harare Residents Association, was tortured by police have been released to the media by his lawyer. Alec Muchadehama said Bake was ordered to lie prostrate on a railway line and told they wanted him run over by a train. His dreadlocks were tied to police vehicle rails before the police started pulling him away and plucking the locks from his bleeding scalp. He was later beaten using booted feet and baton sticks all the way to Harare Central police station. Once there officers in the law and order section took turns assaulting him before they transferred him to Matapi police station in Mbare. The beatings continued there.

Bake is being accused of bombing Marimba Police Station and throwing another petrol bomb into a passenger train travelling to Bulawayo. Police allege a piece of cloth was found at the scene, which matched another one found at Bake’s house. Muchadehama says his client is still being denied medical treatment. The police tortured Bake and forced him to write 5 different statements implicating several other activists for the bombings, which many have dismissed as a government ploy to impose a state of emergency. Press reports say Bake appeared at the magistrate’s court with a shaven head and looked in extreme pain. He was amongst those denied bail on Monday and remanded in custody to the 16th April.

Three bail applications have so far failed to secure the release of opposition activists who were arrested last week as part of the government sanctioned crack down. Defence lawyers have sought to get magistrate Gloria Takundwa to recuse herself from the case citing bias but she refused to do so, arguing there was no evidence to that effect. The High Court will now hear the bail application Thursday morning according to Muchadehama. The state has refused to allow medical treatment for some the activists who were abducted from hospital saying a prison nurse had confirmed that they were now okay. This is despite the activists themselves confirming they needed treatment.

In other related stories the Zimbabwe National Students Union reports that suspected state security agents bombed the University of Zimbabwe new Complex 4 dining hall on Tuesday. ‘A huge and frightening ball of fire engulfed the building destroying property worth trillions of Zimbabwean dollars,’ the union said in a statement. They say a petrol bomb was thrown into the building at around 10pm and students had to vacate the campus residence fearing for their safety. ‘The vampire regime is carrying out an evil operation of petrol bombing police stations, passenger trains and shops, blaming it on the opposition,’ the students union said.