A MAGISTRATE’S court has freed from police custody three journalists arrested this week for alleged ”abuse of journalistic privilege” while it decides their fate.
Magistrate Lilian Kudya ruled that the trio be set free while the court considers the arguments brought by their lawyers.
Kudya is expected to hand down a ruling early on Friday. She could toss out the case, refer it to the Supreme Court, or require the three to make a bail payment while police continue their investigation and the case is heard in magistrate’s court.
US journalist Andrew Meldrum, who works for the British
Guardian, was arrested on Wednesday while Collin Chiwanza and Lloyd Mudiwa, reporters for the only private daily, The Daily News, were arrested on Tuesday.
Chiwanza described their time in jail as ”terrible.”
”As you can imagine, I’m very angry,” he told reporters after his release.
”This arrest came to us as a way to overshadow many other cases” of political violence in Zimbabwe, he said.
They were all being held over a story carried last week alleging that a Zimbabwean woman had been decapitated by pro-government militias in full view of her two daughters.
The three are accused of breaching the country’s new media law, under a clause that criminalises ”abuse of journalistic privilege.”
The offences carry a maximum penalty of 100 000 Zimbabwe dollars ($1 800) or a five year jail term under the security law or two-year imprisonment under the information law.
Lawyers for the three are asking the court either to toss out the charges or to allow a Supreme Court challenge to the law, which they said violates constitutional free speech guarantees.
Meldrum’s lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, told the court that the media law was ”unnecessary, unreasonable and constitutes an undue restriction on the practice of journalism, particularly in a so-called democratic society.”
Prosecutors have asked that they make a bail payment of 2 000 Zimbabwe dollars ($36).
The story that has led to their arrest has since been denied by police, while the Daily News has retracted its story and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which initially backed the story, later said it was false. – Sapa-AFP