Blantyre | Thursday
MALAWI police on Wednesday said they had arrested a senior opposition politician who went on state radio to apologise for past atrocities committed during the reign of late dictator Kamuzu Banda.
Police representative George Chikowi said that senior politician Nicholas Dausi of the formerly ruling Malawi Congress Party was arrested at his Blantyre home on Tuesday night and was charged before a magistrate’s court on Wednesday for conspiracy to withhold information with an aim of thwarting justice.
Chikowi said Dausi, a close longtime bodyguard to Banda, was quoted by state radio apologising for 30 years of atrocities which included political murders and disappearances of political opponents in the southern African state.
”He (Dausi) seems to have a lot of quite useful information on past atrocities. We want him to shed more light on these issues,” Chikowi said.
Banda and several of his key aides and senior policemen were acquitted on charges of alleged murder of four senior politicians in 1983 for lack of evidence, ”which Dausi might have” Chikowi added.
Dausi, appeared unmoved by the charges when he appeared before magistrate Margaret Selemani in Limbe, a satellite town of Blantyre.
Selemani refused to grant bail to Dausi, saying she would rule on that request on Friday.
Dausi was represented by lawyer Viva Nyimba, an opposition activist.
”I have no regrets whatsoever because my apology represents the thinking of the new MCP. I want to encourage the old MCP guys to do likewise and make peace with Malawians,” Dausi told AFP in a mobile telephone interview from his cell shortly before he appeared in court.
Banda offered his ”sincere apologies” to the nation for past atrocities shortly before losing power to President Bakili Muluzi in the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. – Sapa-AFP