Mugabe’s Personal Pilot Arrested
President Robert Mugabe’s one time personal helicopter pilot has been sentenced to six months in prison after trying to remain illegally in the UK and using fraudulent identification documents.
The court heard that Matthew Mufiri, 35, spent 10 years flying Mugabe around Africa, before fleeing Zimbabwe on a visitor’s visa in 2004 and then attempted to claim his right to stay in Britain by offering immigration officials a fake birth certificate belonging to a woman who had died in an accident.
The woman – Kathleen Durkin – has been falsely cited as the mother of more than 70 applicants for British passports, to the distress of her family, Reading Crown Court was told.
Mufiri was sentenced to six months in prison.
However Judge Anthony King made no order for deportation. The only way for Mufiri to be deported would be if he volunteered to go, the court was told.
Mufiri admitted one charge of fraudulently claiming the right to stay in the UK and one count of possessing articles for use in the fraud.
Posted by Wellington Chadehumbe
on March 17, 2009. Filed under Local News.
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