An American journalist charged with publishing a false story under Zimbabwe’s draconian new media laws was found not guilty Monday, but was immediately ordered to leave the country.
Judge Godfrey Macheyo acquitted Andrew Meldrum, saying prosecutors failed to refute his claim he took all reasonable steps to verify his story on the killing of an opposition supporter by ruling party militants. The report was later proved false.
Had he been found guilty, Meldrum, a 50-year-old correspondent for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, could have been jailed for up to two years.
”I feel I am vindicated. I am delighted,” Meldrum said.
Immediately after the acquittal, immigration officials ordered Meldrum, a permanent resident who has lived in Zimbabwe since 1981, to leave the country within 24 hours. Immigration laws empower the government to revoke permanent resident status at will.
Meldrum said he would appeal the order to the High Court. ”This is consistent with the government’s efforts to try and stop me from doing what journalists ought to do,” he said. The increasingly authoritarian government of President Robert Mugabe has cracked down on the independent press, the judiciary, opposition officials and human rights workers during two years of political and economic chaos in the southern African country.
Guardian officials said they ”utterly deplore” the decision to deport Meldrum, and said the deportation order was signed last week, ”suggesting there was never any intention of a just result.”
”This is an extremely serious blow to the operation of a free and independent media in Zimbabwe. We urge the international community publicly to condemn this decision,” said Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian.
Since the new media law was signed in March, 13 independent journalists have been charged with publishing false information. Meldrum’s case was the first to be tried under the law. Meldrum was arrested in May after reporting that ruling party supporters killed a woman. The woman’s husband reportedly said she had been hacked to death and decapitated in front of her two children.
The story originally had been reported in The Daily News, the country’s only independent daily newspaper.
Police said the killing never happened and The Daily News retracted the story, saying it was tricked by an informant to discredit the paper, which is often critical of the government.
Macheyo said prosecutors had not disputed Meldrum’s testimony that police representatives were refusing to talk to the independent media. Macheyo also said the Daily News report on the killing ”looked balanced.”
Meldrum said he hoped his acquittal would help the 12 other journalists charged under the media laws.
”The case has succeeded in showing the state is trying to pervert the rule of law to stamp out a free press,” he said. ”This gives journalists a chance to show they were simply carrying out their duties. I will not be happy until they are acquitted and this law is struck from the books.”
Human rights groups say at least 57 people, most of them opposition supporters, have died in political violence this year surrounding Mugabe’s disputed victory in March presidential elections. – Sapa-AP