/ 30 March 2000

ZIM TO LOOK INTO TORTURE CLAIMS

ZIMBABWE’S Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the commissioner of police to investigate allegations that two journalists were tortured after reporting a coup plot against President Robert Mugabe. Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay ordered commissioner Augustine Chihuri to investigate the claims and prosecute all suspects. The journalists, Standard newspaper editor Mark Chavunduka and reporter Ray Choto, applied for the order after police failed to act over their charges that they had been tortured while in detention in January last year. They are on bail while facing charges of “causing alarm and despondency” by reporting an alleged coup plot by army officers angered by Mugabe’s military intervention in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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