/ 13 July 1999

ZIM DEFIES COURT ORDER ON DETAINED AMERICANS

A HIGH Court trying three Americans detained in Zimbabwe on gun charges heard on Monday that prison authorities had defied a Supreme Court order radically to improve their jail conditions. John Lamonte Dixon, Gary George Blanchard and Joseph Wendell Pettijohn, all aged 35, have been held in Harare since March when they were arrested with offensive weapons. Last week, the Supreme Court granted them improvements in their jail conditions, chief among which was an end to solitary confinement, which they declared infringed on their rights. The trio complained ahead of the opening of their trial on Monday that conditions under which they were being detained at Chikurubi maximum security prison had not changed despite the Supreme Court order.