A state witness in the treason trial of Zimbabwe’s opposition leader testified on Tuesday a tape recorder hidden in her purse malfunctioned during a key portion of a London meeting about what she said was a plot to kill President Robert Mugabe.
Other parts of the meeting were also inaudible, said Tara Thomas, an assistant of Ari Ben Menashe, the Canadian-based political consultant who claims opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sought his help to assassinate the Zimbabwean president.
Thomas (32) told the Harare High Court she concealed a tape recorder in her purse during a meeting between Ben Menashe and Tsvangirai and aides at a London club in late 2001. She said she heard Tsvangirai say the killing of Mugabe must be made to look like an accident or death from natural causes.
”He said if it didn’t look like an accident, the army would step in and there would not be a transitional arrangement,” in which he would become Zimbabwe president, she said.
The tape, however, revealed no such comments. Thomas told state prosecutor Bharat Patel she left the room to check the tape recorder and was shocked to discover it was not recording. However, after the batteries were replaced, and the machine functioned properly, much of the rest of the tape was still unintelligible, she said.
Ben Menashe has accused Tsvangirai and two other opposition leaders of hiring him to help them kill Mugabe. The opposition officials deny the charges, saying Ben Menashe was secretly on the government payroll and framed them. The three could face the death penalty if convicted.
Tsvangirai was charged with treason two weeks before he ran against Mugabe in presidential elections last year. Mugabe, who has been president since Zimbabwe won independence in 1980, won the election, which international observers said was
swayed by rigging and political intimidation.
Ben Menashe, who spent over four weeks on the stand — the longest single testimony in Zimbabwe’s judicial history — testified Tsvangirai sought help at the London meeting to assassinate Mugabe.
Because that audio recording failed, another meeting held December 4 2001 was secretly video taped at the consultancy firm’s Montreal offices.
That video became the main state evidence in the trial. Ben Menashe said he recorded the meeting to gather evidence on the assassination plot so he could hand it over to Canadian, US and Zimbabwean authorities. He insisted he was not working with the government to entrap the opposition. He has testified he received $200 000 from the government two weeks after he gave the secretly recorded video to Zimbabwe agents.
Defence lawyers for Tsvangirai have argued the video, also of poor quality, does not contain incriminating evidence.
Defence lawyer George Bizos has said he will demonstrate during the trial that Ben Menashe, whom he described as ”an unmitigated liar,” has meddled in other foreign elections and used his political consultancy as a front for fraud, lies, and conspiracy.
In his court testimony Ben Menashe alleged agents acting for the Zimbabwe opposition attacked and injured Thomas in Montreal and threatened his own wife and six-year-old daughter, leading to the breakdown of his marriage.
Thomas appeared in the Zimbabwe court limping and leaning on a chrome and rubber-tipped orthopedic walking aid. Bizos said information made available to the defence showed she was injured in a bicycling accident. – Sapa-AP