A Zimbabwean judge refused on Sunday to release a retired colleague who has been jailed since Friday and accused of bias against President Robert Mugabe’s government, the jailed judge’s lawyers said.
High Court Judge Benjamin Hlatshwayo rejected pleas that police had no grounds for suspecting irregularities in retired High Court Judge Feargus Blackie’s last judgments before he left the bench in July, said Raphael Costa, Blackie’s lawyer.
One of Blackie’s last acts as a judge was to sentence Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa to three months in jail on contempt of court charges after the minister repeatedly ignored a court summons.
Chinamasa ignored the ruling and police refused to arrest him in what was seen as further evidence of a breakdown of the rule of law in Zimbabwe.
Blackie, a 65-year-old with a heart condition, spent the weekend in a dirty jail in Harare, his lawyers said.
For 24 hours after his arrest shortly before dawn Friday, Blackie was held incommunicado, without food and in freezing conditions. By Sunday, his lawyers were eventually allowed to bring him food, warm clothing and medication.
They will demand a bail hearing on Monday before a lower court, Costa said.
Arrest in Zimbabwe are often carried out on Fridays to force suspects to spend the weekend in overcrowded and filthy police cells before a court hearing can be held
Blackie’s arrest was seen as part of a continuing crackdown against judges, reporters and activists deemed critical of Mugabe’s increasingly authoritarian rule. The government has accused many white judges, including Blackie, of bias against it.
State media have said Blackie was being investigated on suspicion that he was racially biased when he overturned a one-year jail sentence imposed on a white woman convicted of theft.
His lawyers said on Sunday Blackie was not guilty of bias, but there had been a clerical mix-up in the case.
Zimbabwe has been wracked by more than two years of political and economic turmoil, marked by a violent crackdown against the opposition and government efforts to seize 5 000 white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.
Seven of the country’s 30 senior judges have quit or retired in just over a year. All were considered independent thinkers who had come under pressure from the government and ruling party militants to toe the party line. – Sapa-AP