A Zimbabwean man has spent nine years in prison waiting to be tried for murder, Harare’s Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.
Its website said a visiting judge found Marko Simakani in a remand prison last week, and he finally appeared in the High Court in Harare on Tuesday.
But his trial on charges of rape and murder was delayed once again because the presiding judge, Annie-Mary Gowora, wanted him to undergo a psychiatric examination. Simakani was one of the 10 remand prisoners who had been behind bars waiting for trial or sentence for several years.
Judge President Rita Makarau found him when she toured Harare Central Remand Prison last week.
Simakani’s lawyer submitted that his client had no recollection of the crime he allegedly committed. If he did indeed rape and kill a 16-year-old schoolgirl, Nyarai Bangura, then he did so while his mind was disturbed, said the lawyer.
Prosecutor Chipo Muronda alleged that Simakani intercepted Bangura on July 23 1997, on her way to school and dragged her into a thick bush where he raped her once.
Afterwards, he allegedly crushed Bangura’s head with a huge boulder. She died at the scene. – Sapa