MDC Director General granted bail, but remains in police custody
By Violet Gonda
18 June 2009

MDC Director General Toendepi Shonhe, who was arrested on allegations of perjury on Tuesday, was on Thursday granted bail by a Harare magistrate. But he remains in police custody as the State immediately opposed the magistrate’s ruling.

The Director General had been granted bail of US$500 with stringent reporting conditions. But rights lawyer Charles Kwaramba said, as has become the norm in Zimbabwe, the State prosecutor invoked Section 121 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act, which suspends a bail order for seven days. The State does not have to give a reason for invoking this Section.

However, the accused person’s lawyer Alec Muchadehama immediately challenged the constitutionality of this Section, saying the Attorney General’s office is abusing a court process to punish individuals. Muchadehama said this Section has no place in a democracy and he wants the matter taken to the Supreme Court.

Kwaramba said since the inception of the law in 2000, “Statistics show that in all the cases where the prosecutor has invoked Section 121, they have either not appealed to the High Court, or no appeal has succeeded in the High Court. So what is the reason for using this section? It is punitive.”
Magistrate Jackie Munyonga is expected to make a ruling on the application by the MDC lawyers on Friday.
The MDC CEO is accused of ‘lying under oath,’ when he swore to an affidavit that three members of his party had been re-abducted early this month.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said the three, Terry Musona, Lloyd Tarumba and Fanny Tembo, who the State has listed as State witnesses in the pending trial of several MDC members and civic activists abducted in 2008, were reported missing from their homes in Banket in early June. They were later located and Shonhe withdrew his application from the High Court.
Muchadehama said the Director General had filed the application in the High Court to simply protect the ‘disadvantaged persons of his party,’ who had already been abducted, held incommunicado and tortured for several months in 2008. However, State Prosecutor Allen Masiya opposed bail, even though one of the ‘state witnesses’ confirmed Shonhe’s testimony.

Kwaramba told SW Radio Africa: “One of those members confirmed before the Judge President that ‘yes, we are being forced to testify in court. We are actually victims of abduction’. How then do you say Shonhe has lied under oath? As far as we are concerned it’s just continued harassment.”

MDC Minister Nelson Chamisa and MP Paul Madzore were in court on Thursday. The defence lawyer said he hoped they will go to Parliament and tell their peers that the Attorney General is abusing the law.

Meanwhile the MDC said in a statement on Thursday it is dismayed by the continued detention of Shonhe on trumped-up charges of perjury and demanded the immediate release of its senior employee.