The main state witness in the treason trial of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had a record of ”meddling” in foreign politics going back to the US presidential vote in 1980, defence attorney George Bizos said on Friday.
A congressional committee found Canadian-based consultant Ari Ben Menashe lied over the fate of US hostages held in Iran during the election race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Bizos told the High Court in Harare.
Ben Menashe also lied when he alleged candidates in Australia’s 1987 poll accepted bribes to overlook weapons shipments through that nation, Bizos said.
Ben Menashe has accused Tsvangirai and two other opposition leaders of hiring him to help kill President Robert Mugabe ahead of presidential elections last March.
Tsvangirai was charged with treason two weeks before he ran against Mugabe. He narrowly lost the election, which independent observers said was swayed by political violence and vote rigging. Tsvangirai, Welshman Ncube and Renson Gasela say Ben Menashe framed them. They could face the death penalty if convicted. The charges are based on a grainy four-and-a-half hour secretly recorded video of a meeting with Tsvangirai.
Ben Menashe has admitted having a $1-million with the Zimbabwean government, but said he was not working for them at the time of his meeting with Tsvangirai.
On the fifth day of the trial on Friday, Ben Menashe revealed the government had paid him $100 000 on signing the contract January 10, 2002, two weeks after he delivered the video.
”We want to know what you did for the money, whether you earned it or got it for the entrapment of our clients,” Bizos said.
Bizos also asked Judge Paddington Garwe to arrest Ben Menashe for contempt after he refused to answer questions about his contract with the government, said he could not recall details of his company’s banking arrangements and dodged queries on ”non-performing” deals to provide food to Armenia, Belarus, Ghana, Russia and Zambia, for which Ben Menashe had been paid.
Ben Menashe said most of the contracts, including Zimbabwe’s, included confidentiality agreements.
However, a copy of the Zimbabwe contract exhibited in court showed no such clause. Among its requirements were four ”Zimbabwe friendly” films to be aired by the consultancy in North America. ”What is the confidentiality he is breaching? I could understand if it were for supplying arms not the showing of propaganda films,” Bizos said.
Garwe, who reprimanded Ben Menashe for insulting Tsvangirai with an epithet during his testimony, gave prosecutors until Monday to present an argument why Ben Menashe should be able to refuse to answer questions.
In his questioning of Ben Menashe, Bizos said the consultant ”has created controversy by his meddling” in the other elections. Bizos said he was willing to summon US congressional and Australian officials to testify Ben Menashe was ”an unmitigated liar.”
He said, the consultant had claimed former President George Bush met with Iranian officials in Paris to stall the release of the US hostages to hurt Carter’s 1980 re-election campaign. That claim was proved false by congressional investigators. Shortly before the 1987 Australian election, the Labour Party denied taking bribes from a foreign government over illegal arms shipments, Bizos said.
Bizos also said extensive public records and media reports showed Ben Menashe’s Montreal consultancy engaged in fraud.
None of the five food deals cited in a sworn affidavit by a former employee were honored, Bizos said. In one episode, the employee said he was sent to a supermarket to buy a pack of long grain rice to send as a sample of a consignment destined for Ghana that never materialised.
Ben Menashe said he was called a crook in the western media because he stood up for the oppressed in developing countries, Bizos said, but a London arbitration court had ruled he defrauded Zambia of millions of dollars for grain that was never delivered.
The US magazine Newsweek said Ben Menashe was given to ”fantasising” and other leading world newspapers reported Israel’s denials that Ben Menashe was ever a Mossad agent, as he claimed, Bizos said.
”Israel has denounced him as untrustworthy. He was a junior clerk, not the investigator he holds himself to be,” Bizos said. 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. – Sapa-AP