Britain can’t send exiled CIO agent to The Hague

Britain’s House of Lords was this week told that Whitehall cannot send an alleged Central Intelligence Organisation operative who admitted to torturing several victims while in Zimbabwe because Harare is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Philip Machemedze who now lives in Wales allegedly committed “savage acts of extreme violence” including torturing numerous political opponents of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

He went to Britain in 2000 and got a job as a carer and worked for seven years earning £151 000. He was on a six-month visitor’s visa which did not permit him to work.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass this week asked whether the British government had taken Machemedze’s case to the United Nations Security Council, and if not, why.

Lord Howell of Guildford advised that Zimbabwe was not a party to the Rome Statute so the International Criminal Court had no jurisdiction over events which had taken place in that country.

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