The leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, who is facing charges of plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe, on Wednesday wound up his evidence before a Harare High Court hearing his trial.
The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) denies charges for which he faces the death sentence if convicted, alleging he was framed by the government in a bid to discredit him ahead of presidential polls in March 2002.
Recalling three meetings he held with a Canadian political consultant in 2001, Tsvangirai has denied before the court over the past week-and-a-half that he ever conspired to kill Mugabe.
The state’s evidence in based on a secretly recorded and partially audible video tape of a meeting he attended in Montreal with former Israeli intelligence agency and now political consultant Ari Ben Menashe.
The hearing was adjourned for two weeks to February 11, when the defence and the state attorneys are expected to begin arguing the case.
Throughout the defence he gave over the past eight days Tsvangirai repeatedly denied he had wanted to kill Mugabe, but said that Ben Menashe, whom his party had hired to promote its image and help raise funds overseas, had duped him and started talking about the murder of Mugabe, a subject not on the agenda.
”Mr Menashe was very clear about what he wanted. He wanted to confirm certain things so he could make use of them,” said Tsvangirai on Friday.
The MDC accused Ben Menashe of receiving US$100 000 dollars from the Harare government to trap Tsvangirai in a bid to prosecute him.
Ben Menashe, the state’s key witness in the case, took five weeks to testify against Tsvangirai in court last year.
Tsvangirai also faces a separate treason trial for organising anti-Mugabe protests in 2003. That trial is yet to open.
During his evidence, the opposition leader, whose party has posed the biggest challenge to Mugabe’s government in elections over the past two decades, said he regarded Mugabe as his personal hero at independence.
He, however, said he later changed his impressions of Mugabe because he had ”betrayed a number of objectives” of the revolution, ”and that is why we formed the MDC.”
Tsvangirai said he believed the long-time leader had to be involved in efforts to end the southern African country’s crises. – Sapa-AFP