Jestina Mukoko Alive
Human rights activist Jestina Mukoko, who was abducted in a raid on her home in Norton,is due to make an appearance in court.
She is charged with ten others of bombing Harare’s Central police station and a “plot” to violently topple Mugabe.
Most of the charges are based on “confessions” made in the custody of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO).
The CIO, led by ZANU PF MP Didymus Mutasa, has collected filmed “interviews” with the MDC’s director of security, Chris Dlamini, and Gandhi Mudzingwa, the former Presidential Affairs Director to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who were both abducted earlier this month.
Mukoko, is the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), which collected information on human rights abuses by Mugabe’s security establishment.
On December 9, High Court Judge Anne-Marie Gowora ordered the Zimbabwe Republic Police to produce Mukoko, but in court the police said they didn’t have her in their network of cells.
Mukoko had been due to officiate at a USAID-backed awards ceremony before her abduction by a group of seven plainclothes armed men and a woman.
Two of her colleagues, Pascal Gonzo and Brodrick Takawira, were abducted from the project’s offices a week later.
The High Court judge has already ordered police to immediately release all 32 activists.
The ZPP has played a crucial role in documenting politically motivated violence before and in the run-up to the March 2008 elections, won by the MDC.
Mutasa is a member of the committee of security chiefs, known as the Joint Operations Command.
On Friday, Tsvangirai, in temporary exile in Botswana, said he would withdraw from negotiations to form an inclusive government unless more than 40 abductees were freed or appeared in court.
President Kgalema Motlanthe said last week he did not believe the MDC had been training insurgents in Botswana to topple Mugabe.
Posted by Wellington Chadehumbe
on December 24, 2008. Filed under Local News.
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