A Zimbabwean court on Monday moved the trial of an ex-Rhodesian soldier accused of masterminding a plot to topple President Robert Mugabe to the eastern city of Mutare, officials said.
Peter Hitschmann was arrested in early March along with seven others including an opposition parliamentarian after police said that an arms cache had been found in his home in Mutare, 270km south-east of the capital.
”The trial will be heard in Mutare although the initial bail application was made in Harare,” a court official said after a meeting between the state and Hitschmann’s lawyers.
The official, who asked not to be named, did not give reasons why the case had been moved and could not give the date the trial would start.
Police nabbed Hitschmann in March, leading to the arrest of opposition lawmaker Giles Mutseyekwa and six others who were charged but later released on bail.
The eight men, as well as four police officers, were charged under Zimbabwe’s tough security laws of possession of weapons to carry out an insurgency, sabotage or terrorism.
The prosecution claimed Hitschmann was working for a shadowy organisation called the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement based in Britain, which it said was seeking to overthrow Mugabe’s government.
In March, state television aired reports which claimed that Hitschmann told his interrogators that the arrested legislator and former Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP Roy Bennett were the organisation’s local coordinators.
Bennett was not among those charged as he fled the country and has since applied for political asylum in South Africa, but it has been turned down.
However the opposition party has flatly denied the allegations that its members were working with Hitschmann.
The state said the arsenal found comprised an AK47 assault rifle, seven Uzi submachine guns, four FN rifles, 11 shotguns, six CZ pistols, four revolvers, 15 teargas canisters and several thousand rounds of ammunition. – Sapa-AFP