Lawyers for Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called on Thursday for treason charges against him to be dropped, saying no overt act of treason had been proved.
Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and two senior party officials have been charged with plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe last year.
The state’s case hinges on meetings Tsvangirai held with Canada-based political consultant Ari Ben Menashe in late 2001, at which he is alleged to have requested Ben Menashe’s help in ”eliminating” Mugabe and arranging a coup to take over power.
But George Bizos, argued for the defence that nowhere on a secretly recorded videotape of one of the meetings is Tsvangirai heard to request the consultant’s help in carrying out the alleged assassination plot.
”There was nothing more than discussion initiated by Menashe,” Bizos said. He added that there was ”no evidence of a conspiracy, no evidence of a request” to assassinate Mugabe heard on the tape.
But state lawyer Bharat Patel claimed the video corroborated a testimony given in court by Ben Menashe earlier this year that there had been a prior agreement to kill Mugabe.
”It is abundantly clear, not only that there was prior agreement that President Mugabe should be assassinated, but that the army should be brought in to play” following Mugabe’s elimination, he said.
The defence argued that the MDC contracted Ben Menashe to do political consultancy work for it in Canada and the United States.
But Ben Menashe claims that was just a cover for the alleged plot.
Prosecution lawyers argued that the defence had failed to establish any basis for a discharge and urged Judge Paddington Garwe to place Tsvangirai and his two co-accused on their defence.
The defence’s application for a discharge of the case comes six months after the start of the marathon trial, which has so far heard testimonies from around a dozen state witnesses. – Sapa-AFP