RSS 2.0 FeedSeptember 2010 Vol 23, Human rights and abuse
Rights activist wants abductors exposed
HARARE – Prominent Zimbabwean human rights defender Jestina Mukoko wants the High Court to unmask law enforcement agents behind her sensational abduction and torture in 2008 as she seeks to have her kidnappers and torturers brought to justice. ( Picture:Jestina Mukoko humiliated and refused medication during her unlawful detention)
Mukoko, the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, is suing four cabinet ministers and top police officers for the anguish she suffered as a result of the abduction, wrongful arrest and torture when she was forcibly removed from her Norton home in December 2008.
In an application filed with the Harare High Court, Mukoko is claiming $200 000 damages from former State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, co-Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi and former co-Home Affairs Minister Giles Mutsekwa.
She is also suing Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri, Chief Superintendent Peter Magwenzi and Brigadier-General Asher Walter Tapfumaneyi.
In addition to the damages, the former Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation news anchor also wants the four ministers and top police officers to reveal the names of the law enforcement agents who abducted her.
Her lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa wants the ministers and the police bosses to furnish her with the “full particulars of each law enforcement agent involved in the alleged arrest of the plaintiff (Mukoko), including the name, rank, address and organisation to which he/she is attached.”
The ministers’ lawyers have challenged the torture allegations, saying she was lawfully arrested.
This has prompted Mtetwa to demand that the defendants disclose the “lawful holding facility” where her client was taken to after her alleged arrest.
She also wants the ministers and the senior police officers to disclose “under whose custody” the human rights campaigner was detained during the period 3 December, 2008 to 22 December 2008.
Mukoko was abducted by state security agents in December 2008 and held incommunicado in secret detention centres until the end of December when she was produced at a police station and subsequently in court.
Mukoko was accused of recruiting persons to commit terrorism and banditry, including the recruitment of insurgents to train in Botswana for an alleged armed uprising against President Robert Mugabe’s previous government.
