A constitutional challenge is to be launched in the Zimbabwe Supreme Court on Tuesday over the arrest, imprisonment and trial of Benjamin Paradza, a High Court judge of that country, the General Bar Council of South Africa said on Friday.
Paradza was arrested in his chambers earlier this year after handing down ”a number of orders adverse to the Zimbabwean government”, the council said in a statement.
Paradza was the second High Court judge to be arrested and charged with seeking to interfere with the course of justice. Judge Fergus Blackie was also arrested but in July the state withdrew all charges against him.
The Forum for Barristers and Advocates, which comprises the Australian Bar Association, the Bar of England and Wales, the Irish Bar, the Faculty of Advocates of Scotland, Hong Kong Bar, Northern Ireland Bar, the General Council of the Bar of South Africa and the Namibian Bar, has lent its support to the defence of both judges.
The arrest of the two judges have been widely condemned.
The United Nations’s special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Dato’Param Cumuraswamy, expressed concern over the arrests in a statement issued in Geneva.
The chief justices of Southern Africa earlier this year also expressed concern, pointing out that the Zimbabwe Constitution provided for alleged misconduct by a judge to be dealt with by a special judicial tribunal to be initiated by the chief justice.
A South African senior counsel, Jeremy Gauntlett, SC, would lead Paradza’s legal team of Harare attorney Jonathan Samkange and advocate Julia Wood. — Sapa