A Zimbabwean prosecutor told a court here on Monday that a US journalist charged with publishing falsehoods may not be jailed if convicted in a landmark trial under a tough new press law.
Thabani Mpofu said if Andrew Meldrum was convicted, the state would not seek his imprisonment but would try to have him fined.
”This case before you is, in my submission, not the worst case of its type. There was foundation laid elsewhere. The accused published a falsehood, which falsehood is derived from elsewhere,” Mpofu said.
”Should the accused person be convicted, the state will not ask this court that the accused be imprisoned,” he said, because the story had appeared earlier in the private Daily News, and because the story had an identifiable source.
The comments arose as Magistrate Godfrey Macheyo considered whether he had the jurisdiction to preside over the case.
The maximum fine Macheyo can impose is 10 000 Zimbabwe dollars ($180), compared to the 100 000 dollar ($1 820) maximum sentence allowable for the offence Meldrum is accused of committing.
A 10 000 dollar fine would be just one-tenth of the maximum, but the law also provides for up to two years in prison.
But Mpofu said the anticipated sentence in Meldrum’s case was not a prison term because he did not create the story, but reproduced a false story.
However, defence lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa expressed discomfort at discussing the possible sentence before the actual trial even started.
”We are putting the cart before the horse,” she said.
Meldrum, who works for British daily The Guardian, is charged with publishing falsehoods under a three-month-old press law.
The charges arise from a story initially carried by the Daily News that President Robert Mugabe’s supporters had beheaded an opposition sympathiser in front of her children.
The story was discredited after the man claiming to be her husband was found to have fabricated it. – Sapa-AFP