Zimbabwe’s High Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of its justice minister after he failed to appear in court to answer charges of contempt of court, a state-owned daily said on Tuesday.
Patrick Chinamasa was supposed to answer charges arising from his criticism of a six-month jail sentence imposed on three US missionaries for possession of arms in 1999.
Charges against Chinamasa, who is currently out of the country, arose from a statement he made after the three men — Gary Blanchard, John Dixon and Joseph Pettijohn — were convicted and sentenced to six months in jail.
Chinamasa, who was then Zimbabwe’s chief prosecutor, complained that the sentences were too lenient, accusing the judges of trivialising the crimes which carried a maximum life term.
”The leniency of the sentences constitutes a betrayal of all civilised and acceptable notions of justice and of Zimbabwe’s sovereign interests,” Chinamasa was quoted as saying in 1999.
He said the six-month jail terms induced ”a sense of shock and outrage in the minds of all right-thinking people”.
The High Court took exception to the statement and charged him with contempt.
The men had been found in possession of 39 firearms, about 70 knives, camouflage uniforms and night-vision sights while trying to leave Zimbabwe.
”This is an amount of arms that cannot be described as something that missionaries would carry in their normal vocational exercise,” he said.
The men said they were trying to ship the weapons home after keeping them for self-defence and hunting while working as missionaries for the US-based Harvestfield Ministries in the Democratic Republic of Congo. – Sapa-AFP