By Lance Guma
23 June 2011
For years agents working for the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) have relied on their secret identities to carry out abductions, torture and the murder of opposition activists.
But recently SW Radio Africa received a document, leaked in 2001, containing a list of CIO agents at the time.
It’s expected that a number of the people on the list may have retired or passed away. Agents recruited after 2001 may not be found on the list but there will be many who are still serving.
Described as the “Internal Directory of the President's Office” the list contains the names, home addresses, national ID numbers and employer numbers of some 481 ‘operatives’ and ‘deputy intelligence officers’. Additionally it shows which agents were deployed in the various provinces and districts and the office buildings they used for their ‘work’, including room and telephone numbers.
The list is a ‘who’s who’ of many of the notorious characters who have tainted the image of the CIO and forever associate it with some of Zimbabwe’s most horrific crimes; directing units of the 5th Brigade during the Gukurahundi Massacres in the Matabeleland and the Midlands; the disappearance of Rashiwe Guzha; the shooting of Patrick Kombayi; the hundreds of MDC supporters abducted from their homes and killed.
SW Radio Africa has also been able to verify that dozens on the list are also currently deployed at various Zimbabwean embassies around the world, with dubious job titles like “political, economic, cultural’ councillor. Other agents have claimed that they have since quit the organization and are now living in the UK, US, New Zealand, Australia and other European countries.
A security expert who spoke to SW Radio Africa said a close knit unit of operatives and deputy intelligence officers form the spine of the CIO. The same organization also employs thousands of informers, who could be anyone from street vendors, people in the media, politicians and others who provide information, and receive payment for doing so. This list does not include informants.
Every Thursday for 6 weeks SW Radio Africa will publish a new section of this list, in alphabetical order. We will also publish stories related to some of their crimes, for which they were never prosecuted, while others received presidential pardons.
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