An audio tape intended as evidence that could help incriminate opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in an alleged plot to kill President Robert Mugabe was mostly inaudible, a Harare court was told on Tuesday.
Ari Ben Menashe, a Montreal-based political consultant and the main witness in the state’s case of treason against Tsvangirai, said recording equipment secretly used at a meeting he had with the opposition leader in London failed to pick up most of the conversation.
Ben Menashe said that at the meeting Tsvangirai repeatedly spoke of a plan to assassinate Mugabe and seize power in a coup. Previously Ben Menashe testified Tsvangirai asked him for help to ”eliminate” Mugabe.
Tsvangirai was charged with treason two weeks before he ran against Mugabe in presidential elections last March. The charges are based on a grainy four-and-a-half hour video tape recorded in Ben Menashe’s offices on December 4, 2001, and handed to the government a day later.
If found guilty, Tsvangirai could face the death penalty. George Bizos, Tsvangirai’s defence attorney, however, described a transcript of the London tape written out by Tara Thomas, Ben Menashe’s assistant, as ”probably the most important document in the trial.”
”It negates completely, evidence by this witness on what happened” at the London meeting, Bizos said.
Nowhere in the transcript supplied to state prosecutors by Ben Menashe was reference found to the killing of Mugabe. Ben Menashe said his assistant complained to him that much of the tape was inaudible.
”(The assistant) gave up marking points where it was inaudible and picked up words here and there and put sentences together,” he said adding that ”nothing on the tape could be relied upon.”
Ben Menashe has denied he colluded with the Zimbabwe government to entrap Tsvangirai and two senior opposition colleagues. He has acknowledged, however, a $1-million consulting contract he agreed to with the government shortly after the video taped meeting with Tsvangirai was secretly recorded.
The opposition politicians deny the treason charges and say Ben Menashe framed them. Earlier, Bizos, the lead defence attorney, said a London arbitration court had ruled against Ben Menashe in a dispute over $7-million worth of corn he sold to Zambia but did not deliver.
The transcript showed him trying to dissuade the Zimbabwe opposition from having any dealings with Zambia, indicating he was afraid of being exposed over the grain deal, Bizos said.
He said Ben Menashe had a long history of fraud and international meddling, including spurious involvement in the US presidential election in 1980 and Australia’s 1986 elections.
Australian lawmakers and a US congressional committee concluded he lied on both occasions to discredit election candidates, 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