The treason trial of Zimbabwe opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai over an alleged plot to assassinate President Robert Mugabe ended on Thursday but judgement was not expected for months.
The year-long trial wound up with both the defence and state counsel wrapping up their arguments.
If convicted, Tsvangirai, who is accused of plotting to kill Mugabe and stage a military coup, faces the death penalty.
”The trial in this matter commenced in February last year and since then a lot of evidence was led,” said senior High Court judge Paddington Garwe.
”There will obviously be need for this court to go through all that evidence … and carefully assess the facts against the law.
”Accordingly, judgement in this case is reserved,” he said, adding that once he was ready to deliver judgement, he would announce the date he will hand it down.
The trial, in which the state relied on evidence given by a Canadian political consultant, Ari Ben Menashe, opened on February 3 2003.
Ben Menashe also supplied the state with a grainy videotape of a meeting he held with Tsvangirai and which was secretly recorded.
Tsvangirai denies state allegations that he conspired to have Mugabe murdered ahead of the March 2002 presidential elections, which he lost to the long-time leader.
The opposition and the international community said the polls were marred by widespread fraud and intimidation.
Tsvangirai, a former union leader who formed the Movement for Democratic Change in 1999 to challenge Mugabe, says the government trumped up the treason charges against him in a bid to frame and discredit him ahead of the presidential elections.
He lost the elections, which were discredited by international observers who said they were rigged and marred by political violence.
Tsvangirai said he had hired Ben Menashe’s firm to help with international lobbying and fund-raising for his party, but later discovered the government had also hired it. — Sapa-AFP