Zimbabwean officials late on Wednesday defied a judge’s order to release two British journalists on bail, two weeks after they were detained near a polling station during Zimbabwe’s parliamentary election.
Toby Harnden (35) and Julian Simmonds (45), of The Sunday Telegraph, have pleaded not guilty to charges of violating Zimbabwe’s draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act by working as journalists without government accreditation during the March 31 election.
A court in the rural center of Norton, 40km from Harare, ruled earlier on Wednesday that the journalists should be released on bail of Zimbabwean $1-million (US$161), pending the judgement expected on Thursday.
But senior immigration officer Evans Siziba arrived at Harare’s central remand prison and forbade warders to free them into the custody of British diplomat David Ashford, who was waiting outside the gates after being present in court. Previous efforts to get the journalists released on bail were barred by a special government
order, which expired on Wednesday.
Siziba told warders to ignore the judge’s ruling, the journalists’ lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said.
”The court order had been overruled by the Department of Immigration, and it is illegal,” Mtetwa said.
The British journalists were arrested near a polling station in Norton during the parliamentary elections. They have been held longer than any other journalists in Zimbabwe since the country gained independence in 1980.
Judge Never Diza is due to give a ruling on the case on Thursday afternoon on the charges of violating media and immigration laws, which carry a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment.
The media laws, passed in 2002, have been used to control the media by shutting down the country’s only independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, jail independent Zimbabwean journalists and expel or bar foreign journalists.
Mtetwa has accused the authorities of calculated vindictiveness in the case of Harnden and Simmonds.
The immigration official, Siziba, was a key figure in the 2003 abduction and expulsion from Zimbabwe of American journalist Andrew Meldrum, correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian.
Meldrum, who had permanent residence status after 23 years in Zimbabwe, was forced by Siziba onto on a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, in defiance of court orders after he was acquitted of charges of filing a false report.
Defence lawyer Mtetwa asked that the charges against The Sunday Telegraph journalists be dismissed, saying prosecutor Albert Masamha had failed to prove the two had been working as journalists or had overstayed visas given to them when they entered the country on March 20.
The prosecutor argued the visas were for tourism purposes and were good for only a week.
The government granted accreditation to some foreign media during the ballot, but not all.
President Robert Mugabe’s governing party swept the March 31 elections, though the opposition and international governments criticised the vote as flawed, noting unfair reporting laws and widespread irregularities. – Sapa-AP