Harare lawyer Sternford Moyo, who was president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe at the time, said President Robert Mugabe had put his ministers under “enormous pressure” to come up with ways to control professional workers and the organisations that represented them including the Law Society.
He told this to a United States embassy official shortly after being released by police after being arrested for allegedly contravening the Public Order and Security Act.
Moyo said Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa had repeatedly told him that he wanted the Law Society’s charter changed so that he had the power to appoint the president, secretary and a majority of the councillors that oversee the organisation.
The Minister appointed only two out of the 12 councillors. Moyo said he told Chinamasa that he would resist such a move.
Shortly after Moyo said this, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo came out with a statement saying there was an “urgent need” to amend the Legal Practitioners’ Act, which governs the operations of the Law Society of Zimbabwe.
Full cable:
Viewing cable 02HARARE1418, ZIMBABWE: MULTIPLE REASONS BEHIND ARREST OF LAW
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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 001418
SIPDIS
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR JFRAZER
LONDON FOR CGURNEY
PARIS FOR CNEARY
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/13/2012
SUBJECT: ZIMBABWE: MULTIPLE REASONS BEHIND ARREST OF LAW
SOCIETY PRESIDENT
Classified By: Political Officer Todd Faulk for reasons 1.5 (b)
and (d)
¶1. (C) Summary: On June 11, Law Society of Zimbabwe
President Sternford Moyo described to poloff in detail his
June 3-5 detention by Zimbabwe Republic Police and the
farcical court proceedings that resulted in his release. The
Law Society Secretary, Wilbert Mapombere, was also arrested
and held during this period, and on June 4, police arrested
and interrogated the entire staff of the Law Society for
about four hours. Moyo stated that the police clearly did
not have a case, the evidence of his supposed involvement in
planning mass action with the opposition MDC and British High
Commission was fabricated, and that the Government caused
High Court Judge President Paddington Garwe, who oversaw his
case, to keep Moyo and Mapombere on remand in spite of the
lack of evidence. There are a number of reasons the
Government of Zimbabwe is trying to intimidate him now, Moyo
speculated, including his resistance to a planned Government
takeover of the Law Society and his plans to speak out in
international fora on the deterioration of the rule of law in
Zimbabwe. End summary.
—————-
The First Arrest
—————-
¶2. (C) On June 11, poloff met with Law Society of Zimbabwe
(LSZ) President Sternford Moyo in the offices of his law firm
Scanlen & Holderness to discuss his June 3-5 detention and
the reasons behind it. Moyo is one of the most respected
lawyers in Zimbabwe and through the LSZ, which represents
Zimbabwe’s legal profession, he has been a steadfast defender
of the rule of law in Zimbabwe. In the early afternoon of
June 3, police arrested Law Society Secretary Wilbert
Mapombere. While Moyo was attempting to arrange legal
representation for Mapombere, a squad of riot police burst
into his law firm office with a search warrant and said he
was under arrest for violating the Public Order and Security
Act (POSA). Moyo protested that their warrant was very vague
and their search would violate attorney-client privilege;
they searched his office anyway, but did not find anything of
interest. The police then took Moyo to his residence in the
suburb of Kambanji, presented another search warrant (that
had the wrong street number on it), and searched those
premises. There, the police took a paper Moyo had presented
in April to the SADC Lawyers Association conference in
Livingstone, Zambia. The police officers then conveyed Moyo
to Harare Central Prison, where he briefly spoke to several
lawyers who were not given the specific reasons for his
arrest. Police inspectors presented to Moyo two letters, one
supposedly signed by Mapombere and addressed to the British
High Commission, and another written to Moyo by MDC
Secretary-General Welshman Ncube. The letter attributed to
SIPDIS
Moyo, which was poorly written, in the third person, and
filled with grammatical and spelling errors, had him planning
to organize “peaceful mass action” with the support of the
MDC. (Note: The MDC and British High Commission in Harare
have both patently denied ever writing or receiving such
letters and accused the GOZ of fabricating them. End note.)
In a statement to the police, Moyo denied the authenticity of
the letters and noted the section of the POSA the police said
he had supposedly violated did not exist. The inspectors
eventually agreed there was no reasonable cause for
continuing to detain Moyo, and released him about 10:30 pm
that evening, and Moyo returned home.
—————–
The Second Arrest
—————–
¶3. (C) After midnight the same evening, police officers
returned to Moyo’s home and said they had been instructed to
detain him again. In protest, Moyo called Attorney-General
Andrew Chigovera, who contacted Police Commissioner Augustine
Chihuri. After about an hour, Chihuri called back and said
the officers who gave the orders could not be reached and
there was nothing he could do. The police took Moyo to
Highlands police station, where his jacket, socks and shoes
were taken and he was placed in a smelly, unheated cell with
nine other prisoners. When he asked if the water covering
the floor was clean, he was told it was the overflow from the
broken toilet. The one blanket in the cell smelled of urine
and was covered with lice and fleas. The cold and the stench
prevented Moyo from getting any sleep. At about 7 am, June
4, he was transferred back to Harare Central Prison, where he
was booked. Around 3 pm, police took him, Mapombere and the
five staff members of the Law Society (who were arrested
earlier in the afternoon) to Lake Chivero, a wilderness park
25 km west of Harare. On the way, police officers told the
staff members they were going to a park filled with lions,
apparently in an attempt to frighten them into saying
something incriminating against Moyo or Mapombere. Upon
arrival, the detainees were separated and four police
officers were assigned to each staff member, and they were
each taken to a different area of the park. They were
interrogated about Moyo’s and Mapombere’s activities for four
hours, but none of them said anything incriminating. At
about 8 pm, they were all returned to Harare, where the staff
members were released; Moyo and Mapombere were taken to
separate police stations for another night in jail.
—————-
Courtroom Antics
—————-
¶4. (C) In the morning of June 5, Moyo–who had not been
offered food or water during his detention or given access to
his attorneys since his first arrest–was taken to the High
Court for a hearing. During the proceedings, the prosecutor
complained to Justice Garwe (also the Judge President of the
High Court) that the police had consistently refused to give
him reasons for the detention of the Law Society leaders.
(Note: Moyo heard later that Garwe had repeatedly delayed the
hearing to give the police and the Attorney-General’s office
more time to come up with evidence and that Supreme Court
Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a known ruling party supporter,
the Justice Ministry Permanent Secretary and another GOZ
official were seen entering Garwe’s chambers just before the
hearing. End note.) After Moyo’s attorneys presented their
application for release, the prosecutor had no affidavit to
challenge it. Garwe chastised the police for failing to
provide reasons for Moyo’s detention, remarked that he found
their evidential letters “defective” (see paragraph 2), and
stated that even though the police mistakenly charged Moyo
under a nonexistent clause of the POSA, he believed he knew
which clause they meant. Despite all these failings of the
State’s case, Garwe found, incredibly, that Moyo’s detention
was lawful and that the letters presented by the police were
grounds for further investigation. Those in attendance were
so appalled that no one stood as Garwe left the courtroom.
Even the police investigators, who expected the case to be
dismissed, were aghast. As the State presented no official
challenge, and the 48-hour limit for detention was up, Moyo
and Mapombere were free to go. Only after the
Attorney-General contacted Moyo’s lawyers later in the day
was an arrangement made to put Moyo and Mapombere on remand
(bail). They both appeared in magistrate’s court on June 6,
when they were each required to pay Z$20,000 (US$43) bail and
surrender their passports. They will be on remand until
August 1.
—————————————
Several Reasons Behind the Intimidation
—————————————
¶5. (C) Moyo elaborated on a number of possible reasons the
GOZ has chosen to try to intimidate and harass him now, even
though the Law Society has routinely spoken out in the past
against the erosion of the rule of law in Zimbabwe:
a) The Justice Ministry has hatched a plan to indoctrinate
all prosecutors, judges and magistrates in the history of the
anti-colonial struggle. The plan would have Army instructors
setting up courses at the Judicial College, a heretofore
independent institution that trains mainly magistrates in
legal procedures. As a member of the Judicial College board,
Moyo opposed this plan and said the Law Society would
consider a legal challenge to it if it went forward. Garwe
and Chidyausiku, who are also board members, replied that
they would be willing to hold the courses outside the
Judicial College, but would insist on the indoctrination. As
a counteroffer, Moyo proposed to have members of the Law
Society teach the courses. Chidyausiku, who is the board
chairman, said this sounded like an American-funded “Trojan
horse” designed to frustrate the Third Chimurenga and refused
the offer.
b) Moyo told poloff that all government ministers are under
enormous pressure from Mugabe to come up with ways to gain
control of professional workers and the organizations that
represent them, such as the LSZ. Justice Minister Patrick
Chinamasa has repeatedly told Moyo that he wants the Law
Society’s charter changed so that he has the power to appoint
the president, secretary and a majority of the councilors
that oversee the organization. Currently, he appoints only
two out of the 12 councilors. Moyo told Chinamasa that he
would resist such a move. Shortly after Moyo said this,
Information Minister Jonathan Moyo came out with a statement
(in April) saying there was an “urgent need” to amend the
Legal Practitioners’ Act, which governs the operations of the
LSZ. Police have also gone to local banks in an attempt to
freeze LSZ assets; the banks have thus far refused to
cooperate without a court order.
c) Last month, the LSZ released its annual report, which was
critical of the Government’s erosion of the rule of law, the
Constitution’s allowance for the President to pack the
Supreme Court, and a number of Supreme Court decisions that
demonstrate that the highest court in the land can no longer
be counted on to protect Zimbabweans’ basic human rights.
d) The GOZ wants to prevent articulate speakers from
criticizing GOZ policy in international fora. Moyo believes
the GOZ, in part, wanted an excuse to seize his passport so
he could not travel this week to Durban, where he was to
present a paper on international press freedom to the
International Bar Association. He was also due to go to
Montreal later this year to help vet legal officers for the
bar of the International Criminal Court. Chinamasa has
called Moyo several times to question his patriotism over the
release of damning papers and reports. “It is precisely
because I am a patriot that I have to speak out about what is
happening,” Moyo told Chinamasa.
——-
Comment
——-
¶6. (C) We fear the arrest and detention of the LSZ leaders
is a precedent for an expanded campaign of GOZ intimidation
against Zimbabwean NGOs. Now that the MDC has been
effectively stymied in the aftermath of the March
presidential election, the GOZ may be turning more of its
attention to outspoken civil society organizations. Any one
of the reasons Moyo mentioned would be enough to begin
harassing Moyo, but all of them combined present the GOZ with
a compelling reason to make a greater effort to hamper LSZ
activities. If the GOZ cannot bend Moyo to its wishes or
take control of the organization, it may attempt to close it
down altogether. Other active NGOs that speak out against
the GOZ’s increasingly repressive tactics, like the Legal
Resources Foundation, the Amani Trust, and Zimbabwe Lawyers
for Human Rights, are prime candidates for similar treatment.
With the judiciary under firmer GOZ control, as seen in
Garwe’s blatantly partisan handling of the sloppily contrived
case against Moyo, we can expect the GOZ to try more of these
actions in the future. The GOZ remains bent on cowing anyone
who dares to resist its tyrannical edicts. End comment.
SULLIVAN
(77 VIEWS)
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