Chris Dhlamini’s sworn account of his experiences after he was abducted last year

The attached affidavit (see end of post) is Chris Dhlamini’s account of what happened to him in the days leading up to 31 December 2008, the day the affidavit is signed. It is a shocking account of torture, unlawful abduction and the way the rule of law was circumvented to illegally imprison him. It gives a real insight into the terror and fear all the abductees must have experienced.

Chris Dhlamini, Ghandi Mudzingwa and Andresson Shadreck Manyere continue to be denied bail. Manyere is being held in appalling conditions at Chikurubi. This via SW Radio Africa (14 April 2009):

MDC senior officials Gandhi Mudzingwa and Chris Dhlamini, plus freelance journalist Shadreck Manyere, remain in police custody after the AG’s offices invoked a section of the draconian Criminal Procedures and Evidence Act, to ensure that bail would be blocked.

The legal team now awaits a decision by the same judge who granted bail, to see if the State will be allowed to appeal this in the Supreme Court. If the judge does grant the prosecution team permission to appeal, the State then has seven days to lodge the appeal in the Supreme Court. If the judge refuses the State can still approach the Supreme Court direct, to ask for leave to appeal.

Defence lawyer Charles Kwaramba said if the seven days elapsed without any movement by the State the accused persons become entitled to be released. But this is a game that ZANU PF has a lot of practice with and that is unlikely to happen.

The three, who are being accused of plotting to destabilise the Mugabe regime, have been in police custody since December. Several of their co-accused are already out on bail, but they remained in custody after the State claimed they were found with dangerous weapons. They deny this and accuse state agents of torture, after they were abducted at gunpoint.

They sustained serious injuries, which resulted in Mudzingwa and Dhlamini being hospitalised under police guard at the Avenues Clinic, while Manyere is still being held in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison.

The document is in PDF format and you’ll need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read it. Download Adobe reader for free here.

Download the affidavit – (this is a large document, approximately 4MB in filesize)

This entry was posted by Sokwanele2 on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 1:29 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.