The leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, Morgan Tsvangirai, was cleared on Friday of charges of plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe, a step he said could pave the way for a national reconciliation in the deeply divided nation.
But the government reacted by saying the verdict had been wrong and said it might take further legal action.
”After perusing the judgment, the government of Zimbabwe is of the strong view that the accused, Morgan Tsvangirai, has been wrongly acquitted,” Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement.
The minister said the government ”accepts and respects the verdict but reserves the right to exercise other options available to it in terms of the law”.
Charges of high treason were brought against Tsvangirai based on a secretly filmed meeting he had in 2001 with Canadian-based political consultant Ari Ben Menashe in 2001. The government alleged the videotape of the meeting showed Tsvangirai seeking help to kill Mugabe and stage a coup.
But Tsvangirai, who could have faced the death penalty if found guilty, was acquitted on Friday by Judge Paddington Garwe of the Harare High Court.
”The state has not been able to prove high treason beyond reasonable doubt,” the judge said, triggering thunderous applause from onlookers in the packed courtroom.
A beaming Tsvangirai went over and hugged his lawyers before walking out of the courthouse hand-in-hand with his wife and driving away.
Judge Garwe said the testimony of Menashe, the government’s star witness, had been suspect and the main evidence — the grainy videotape of the meeting with Tsvangirai — had not proved the latter had asked for help to ”eliminate” the country’s long-time head of state.
”What is clear is that this evidence has to be treated with circumspection,” Garwe said. The videotape did ”not give a complete picture of what was discussed”, the picture was ”hazy” and the sound was ”broken”, he said.
”It is common cause that nowhere in the videotape is there a direct request made by the accused … to assassinate the president and arrange a coup,” he concluded.
The justice minister rejected Garwe’s verdict.
”There was enough evidence contained in the video and the transcript of the video to secure and justify a conviction in the case,” Chinamasa insisted.
During his marathon trial, which began in February 2003, Tsvangirai’s defence argued Menashe had been hired by the government to frame the opposition leader ahead of a presidential election in March 2002, which Tsvangirai lost to Mugabe.
Tsvangirai, a former labour leader, blames the government lead by Mugabe, who has been in power for 24 years, for the economic and political problems that are crippling the southern African country.
Addressing reporters during celebrations at his home after the verdict, Tsvangirai said he had been ”prepared for the worst”.
”As it turned out, justice has taken its course. I have been vindicated,” he said.
Tsvangirai told reporters his political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had yet to decide whether or not to run in the general election scheduled for next March.
”(The government) have six months. When we come to the elections they cannot make an excuse that ‘we did not get sufficient time to correct the electoral environment so that it becomes level, so that it becomes free and fair’,” Tsvangirai said.
He said a decision on whether the MDC would contest the ballot would be taken ”when we have made the holistic assessment of the situation then –but not now”.
”The elections I think are going to be an opportunity and a challenge for the MDC,” Tsvangirai added.
He was upbeat about the future prospects of his party, which some observers said was losing steam ahead of the crucial parliamentary poll.
”Some of the people who have decided to write off the MDC have to think again,” he said. ”This party is an alternative. It’s an idea whose time has come. It cannot be wished away.”
Security was tight across Harare on Friday. Police and paramilitary forces patrolled areas around the High Court ‒ which is opposite key government buildings — and put up roadblocks on streets leading to the court complex.
After the verdict, police fired teargas and used batons to disperse some 200 supporters who were celebrating outside the court and blocking traffic, witnesses said.
Three journalists were arrested but later released. Twenty opposition supporters, mainly women and young men, were also taken in and held for several hours. Most were released after paying ‘admission of guilt’ fines, said an opposition official. – Sapa-AFP