Four journalists from a Zimbabwean independent weekly accused of defaming President Robert Mugabe for reporting that he ”grabbed” a commercial plane for a holiday in Asia, appeared briefly in court on Thursday.
”They appeared for their remand hearing and the four of them have been remanded until April 1,” said their lawyer Lynda Cook.
The Zimbabwe Independent editor Iden Wetherell, news editor Vincent Kahiya and reporters Dumisani Muleya and Itai Dzamara, were arrested early this month for alleging that Mugabe had commandeered an aircraft from national carrier Air Zimbabwe for a holiday in Asia.
No date has been set for their trial. They have been ordered to return to court on April 1 for further remand.
The criminal defamation charges against the newsmen arose from a story run in the Independent newspaper on January 9 saying Mugabe had taken a wide-bodied Boeing 767 aircraft from Air Zimbabwe for his annual vacation.
There has been no official denial that the president chartered a plane for his trip to the Far East.
Zimbabwe’s media has in recent years been going through turbulence, especially after the introduction of the tough new media law in March 2002, shortly after Mugabe was re-elected in polls decried as fraudulent by the opposition and many
international observers.
The country’s most popular daily, the Daily News — a staunch critic of Mugabe’s government — was shut down in September last year, when police raided and occupied its premises.
Despite repeated attempts by the state to frustrate its bid to re-open through court orders, the paper resumed publishing a week ago and has continued putting out issues as it awaits the outcome of litigation before the country’s courts.
Human rights lawyers interpret recent developments in Zimbabwe’s media industry as attempts to gag the press.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) said the arrests of the Independent’s journalists were a ”deliberate and calculated attempt to muzzle the press” and would ”compromise the independence and entrenched freedom of the press”.
”ZLHR criticises in the strongest of terms such blatant disregard of the independent press and demands that the press be left to freely perform its core function,” said the lawyers in a statement issued shortly after the arrests of the journalists. – Sapa-AFP