A man who gunned down a white Zimbabwean farmer four years ago has been sentenced to death by the Zimbabwe High Court, reports said on Wednesday.
Munetsi Kadzinga (31) was sentenced to death by high court Judge Bharat Patel on Tuesday after he was convicted of murdering farmer Charles Anderson in 2002, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported.
”The court is of the unanimous opinion that there are no extenuating circumstances in this case. It follows that I have no option but to impose the morally invidious but legally inescapable sentence of death upon the accused,” Patel was quoted as saying.
Kadzinga and an accomplice ransacked Anderson’s farmhouse in Mashonaland central province in June 2002. Kadzinga shot and killed Anderson, a father of two, as he arrived back home with his family before escaping with a vehicle and looted property.
More than a dozen white farmers have been murdered since President Robert Mugabe launched his controversial white land seizures in 2000. But very few of the perpetrators have been arrested or convicted in court.
Earlier in the trial Patel dismissed Kadzinga’s claim that he had been told to carry out attacks on white farmers by senior government officials, including the then-Home Affairs Minister, John Nkomo. — Sapa-dpa