A controversial Canada-based political consultant testified on Tuesday in the treason trial of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai that he was asked to help arrange a coup and the killing of President Robert Mugabe.
Ari Ben Menashe, who said he was a former Israeli intelligence agent who had once worked undercover in Zimbabwe with the approval of Mugabe’s government, said he decided to set up a sting operation to record evidence against Tsvangirai.
Ben Menashe testified that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) told him it wanted to pay $10- million to the Zimbabwe Air Force commander, Air Marshal Perence Shiri, to lead a coup.
The charges stem from a videotape secretly recorded by Ben Menashe during a meeting with Tsvangirai in Montreal in December 2001.
Tsvangirai and two senior party colleagues, Welshman Ncube and Rensen Gasela, have denied plotting to kill Mugabe, arguing they were framed to weaken the opposition. They could face the death penalty if convicted.
The opposition leaders contend they were set up by Ben Menashe. Both the defence and the independent Zimbabwe Mass Media Monitoring Project has said the videotapes have been heavily edited.
A timer that appears in the broadcast version of the tapes also indicates they have been edited.
Ben Menashe, in his testimony, said Tsvangirai said sources in the British government would provide the money to finance the coup.
He said Shiri, the air force commander, was later cleared of any involvement.
At two meetings with Tsvangirai, the opposition leader said he wanted Mugabe killed, Ben Menashe told the High Court in Harare.
At the first, Tsvangirai allegedly said: ”Mugabe will not leave office unless he is carried out in coffin… he has to be killed, it has to look like an accident and nothing to do with the MDC,” Ben Menashe testified.
Tsvangirai had allegedly called for ”the real action to take place”, leading to a coup d’etat, he said.
Ben Menashe, head of the Montreal consulting firm Dickens and Madson, said Tsvangirai left ”no confusion in my mind” over the plot to assassinate Mugabe.
Tsvangirai, he alleged, asked him about the furnishings at Mugabe’s state residence and said when he was president by the end of 2001 he would give the Montreal lobby group contracts worth $30-million, adding: ”You will be rich men, all of you.”
Defence attorney George Bizos objected to Ben Menashe’s repeated flippancy in the dock.
”The witness is clowning. This is a court of law not a place of entertainment. The time has come for him to be a serious person,” he admonished Ben Menashe for his expansive gestures, descriptive testimony ruled inadmissible as hearsay and flippant references to Ncube.
Ben Menashe said he decided to report the three to Canadian, US and Zimbabwean authorities after verifying their intentions at a second meeting at a London hotel which his assistant was to record on an audio tape.
But the recording of that meeting was inaudible and another meeting with Tsvangirai in Montreal was secretly videotaped.
The US, British and Australian governments have publicly condemned the charges and said they appeared to be an attempt by Mugabe to intimidate and repress his political opposition.
Tsvangirai denies Mugabe’s assassination was ever raised with the consultant and that his remarks about Mugabe’s ”elimination” were taken out of their political context.
Ben Menashe told presiding Judge Paddington Garwe he took an ideological stance against the Zimbabwe opposition when he discovered it had been ”hijacked” by Britain, the former colonial power, and whites opposed to Mugabe’s nationalisation of white-owned farms.
”It was also clear to everybody that the leader of the MDC was probably a stooge for people who didn’t want land reform, didn’t want revolution and some people who believed Ian Smith was the greatest man since Winston Churchill,” he said.
Ian Smith was the last white ruler of Rhodesia before it became independent Zimbabwe in 1980.
Ben Menashe said the Western media often described him as ”a crook” because he advised governments and clients opposed by the West.
Ben Menashe was acquitted by a US federal jury in 1990 of charges he illegally arranged a $36-million deal to sell US-made military cargo planes to Iran in exchange for the release of four American hostages in the Middle East.
Ben Menashe denied his firm was secretly working for the Zimbabwe government at the time he said met with Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai said the Canadian firm had offered to help the MDC buff up its image in the West.
After chaos at the opening of the trial on Monday, when police barred entry to journalists, lawyers and diplomats, police on Tuesday obeyed an order by the judge to allow public access to the hearing, which is expected to last three weeks. – Sapa-AP