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What is the crash chopper pilot trying to hide?

Pleading guilty to a crime is mainly for two reasons: to save the criminal from a lengthy trial when he or she knows that he or she is going to lose, or, for hard core criminals, to avoid gruelling cross examination that might lead to more incrimination. Usually when one pleads guilty the law enforcement agents and the courts are lenient. The guilty plea by South African businessman Fredrick Wilhelm August Lutzkie who entered into Zimbabwe illegally with his helicopter on several occasions therefore raises a lot of questions especially when one considers that after he crashed in Gwanda, Lutzkie used an excavator to dig a pit big enough to bury the wreckage. What was he trying to hide? Why did he cross into Zimbabwe illegally so many times? These are the questions that the public will never get an answer to because he pleaded guilty. Maybe the law enforcement agents got more information before accepting his plea, but the nation needs to know what he was doing. Lutzkie might be a shady businessman who has been siphoning things out of the country over a period.

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Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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