A Zimbabwean court trying two British journalists accused of illegally covering last week’s parliamentary polls heard on Monday that a camera they apparently used to photograph the vote did not contain any images.
”It was confirmed there were no images on the camera,” said Denford Dhilwayo, a police detective testifying in the trial of The Sunday Telegraph‘s chief foreign correspondent Toby John Harnden (37) and photographer Julian Paul Simmonds (46).
”It was blank. The probability that it could have been tampered with is there,” he said.
Another police officer testifying last week said he seized the camera from the journalists and took it for safekeeping at a local police station.
The journalists’ lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said police had done a shoddy job.
”The assertion by the accused that they were tourists was not investigated in any way by the police,” Mtetwa said.
”The number of versions that have been given in court show that the police simply jumped to conclusions without proper investigation. We don’t have a single witness who has confirmed what is contained in your state outline.”
Earlier prosecutor Albert Masamha had produced a notebook he claimed contained evidence that the journalists interviewed some people during the March 31 polls.
Harnden and Simmonds were arrested at a polling station in the small town of Norton, 40km west of the capital Harare on polling day.
Magistrate Never Diza last week granted them bail with stringent conditions but the prosecution invoked a law which prevents the release of suspects for seven days while the state appeals against the granting of bail.
The two men are accused of working without accreditation, an offence that carries a maximum jail sentence of two years, and for overstaying their seven-day tourist visas they obtained when they crossed into Zimbabwe from Zambia.
They pleaded not guilty last week to violating the country’s media and immigration laws.
Zimbabwe’s elections were keenly monitored as a test of Harare’s commitment to stage free and fair polls after two flawed ballots in 2000 and 2002. – Sapa-AFP