MDC national organiser, Amos Chibaya will spend the weekend in prison after he was remanded in custody by a Harare magistrate. Luke Ta...
MDC national organiser, Amos Chibaya will spend the weekend
in prison after he was remanded in custody by a Harare magistrate.
Luke Tamborinyoka raged :“It was a clear case of command justice when MDC OrganiSing
Secretary Hon. Amos Chibaya was today remanded in custody to Monday 26 August
for a ruling on his bail application.
Chibaya, the convener of last week’s peaceful and
constitutional demonstrations that were brutally foiled by the police, spent
five hours in court today with the prosecution arguing that he be denied bail.
His lawyer, Obey Shava exposed the State case for its
clumsiness, arguing that Chibaya could not be denied bail on a lesser charge of
violating provisions under POSA when he was already on bail on a more serious
charge of subversion. The State also denied a bail offer from Hon. Chibaya to
commit a monetary payment with stringent reporting conditions as well as a
pledge not to interfere with State witnesses, who in any case are police
officers. Chibaya’s passport is already with the court as part of his reporting
conditions for a subversion charge he is already facing and for which he is on
bail.
Chibaya’s remand in custody is testimony that the regime is
undertaking a brutal programme of persecution by prosecution after they denied
the MDC Organiser bail even though he had handed himself over to the police in
the company of his lawyer.
The MDC believes that the country is choking under the
thick blanket of an unofficial state of emergency. There is a systematic
targeting of innocent Zimbabweans and the people’s leaders by brutally blocking
them from exercising their constitutional right to peaceful demonstrations.
It also telling that Hon. Chibaya was denied bail on the
very same day that the State waged a clampdown on the leaders of a rural
teachers union in which their lawyer, Douglas Coltart, was brutally assaulted.
Coltart is the son of the MDC Treasurer-General, Hon. David Coltart.
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