Police faked evidence in MDC ‘terrorism’ case
By Lance Guma
27 July 2007.

It took a High Court Judge just a few minutes to say what many have been saying for almost 5 months. That the arrest and detention of over 32 MDC activists without trial was based on fake evidence from the police. Justice Lawrence Kamocha delivered the stinging criticism on Wednesday after freeing 15 activists who were facing terrorism charges. He threw out all the key police evidence submitted, saying they had failed to show on a map the location of a farm in South Africa where the alleged banditry training was supposed to have taken place. The judge concluded the farm was ‘nonexistent’ and that state witnesses were ‘fictitious persons’.

Despite the new development two other officials Morgan Komichi and Dennis Murira remain in custody facing allegations they were responsible for recruiting the group freed this week. On Friday Newsreel spoke to the wife of MDC administrator Kudakwashe Matibiri. He had also been released on Wednesday. She bemoaned the absence of the rule of law in the country saying her husband suffered in remand prison all those months for nothing. Narrating how costly the transport fares were to go and see him, she said it was clear from the beginning there was no case to answer and that it was a campaign to harass the opposition.

She says in the first three weeks of his detention she was allowed to speak to him everyday but after that prison guards only gave enough time to hand over food. ‘We were then only allowed to speak to our loved ones once a week up until their release,’ she added. In March this year police arrested over 32 party officials at the MDC Harvest House headquarters. The state alleges they were engaged in banditry training and that some of them threw petrol bombs at public trains, police stations and supermarkets. The case has been falling apart gradually with indications the government was never really worried about securing a conviction, just content to keep the activists in custody for as long as possible.