Bennett says trial an absolute farce

By Violet Gonda
24 November 2009

MDC Treasurer General Roy Bennett has described his terrorism trial, which began two weeks ago, an ‘absolute farce’ and ‘a joke.’ The MDC official, who has not been sworn into government as the Deputy Minister of Agriculture because Robert Mugabe is refusing to swear him in, said he is frustrated with the slow pace the trial is taking.

He told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that the time spent in court is very little: “We have not even done a full three hours in court yet. If the court is supposed to start at 10 o’clock, we are only starting, most days, after 11am, having arrived there at 10 am and sitting a full hour waiting for the judge to come in… the whole thing is just a joke.”

Last week the judge, Justice Chinembiri Bhunu, refused to recuse himself from the case after Bennett’s lawyers requested that he hand the trial over to another judge. The High Court judge had in 2006 handled the Peter Hitschmann trial which the defence team said showed he might be ‘prejudicial’ to Bennett. But he refused, saying the cases of Hitschmann and Bennett ‘were separate.’

Bennett said because of the slow pace the trial is likely to drag on for some months. He said so far only two state witnesses have testified and have failed to show a case against him. The first witness was Chief Superintendent James Makone who told the High Court on Monday that, despite the case going to trial, investigations against the MDC official had not been completed.

The lead investigating officer also said, they had found evidence showing that Bennett had paid Hitschmann $5 000 to acquire weapons to eliminate government officials, and the money was allegedly deposited in Hitschmann’s account in Mozambique. But the State witness failed to link the MDC official to the money deposited into Hitschmann’s account. Hitschmann is a registered firearms dealer.

Bennett said he found it bizarre that the case is nearly three and a half years old but the investigations are not finished. “Why go to trial if the investigations are not completed?”

He added: “And the second witness was a CIO operative from the President’s Office, and basically I don’t know why they called him because he had absolutely nothing to say.”

“The whole thing is an absolute farce and there is absolutely nothing linking me to anything that has happened. Everything is going along on basically what happened to Peter Hitschmann, and based on the arms that were found in Hitschmann’s house – a case which was thrown out of court completely.” These are the same charges that Bennett is charged with, and he says the state has failed to link him to Hitschmann.

Bennett was arrested ten months ago and is accused of illegal possession of weapons for terrorism, banditry and insurgency. The MDC says the charges are trumped up. The fragile coalition government nearly collapsed after an MDC boycott, in protest against the re-arrest of the Treasurer-General, and Mugabe’s refusal to fully implement the Global Political Agreement.

The former commercial farmer said there is no sincerity on the part of ZANU PF or Mugabe in moving this process forward. “Everything they are doing is to delay this process and nothing seems to be moving.”