Zimbabwe farmer to be charged with murder of black settler

A white farmer will be charged with murdering one of a group of black Zimbabweans that took over part of his land, police said today.

Spiro Landos also faces a charge of attempted murder for allegedly wounding another settler during a dispute at the farm near Odzi, 140 miles east of the capital Harare, police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka said.

Landos, 45, was also hurt in Monday’s clash and is being held under police guard at a hospital in the eastern provincial capital of Mutare, Mandipaka said.

President Robert Mugabe’s government has seized 5,000 white-owned farms in an often-violent campaign to redistribute land to black Zimbabweans.

Landos had already relinquished part of his property to the settlers, but a dispute arose over the boundary between them, according to his lawyers.

Police said the settlers claim Landos was injured as they tried to disarm him.

However, Landos’s lawyers said he fired a pistol in self defence when he was assaulted by the group.

Landos, who is of Greek descent, is the second white farmer to face a murder charge since the land redistribution campaign began in 2000. The charge carries a possible death sentence.

Another farmer was jailed for 15 years in 2001 after being convicted of running down a settler in his truck and killing him.

Sixteen white farmers have also been killed in violence blamed mainly on ruling party militants and veterans of the guerrilla war that led to independence from Britain in 1980. No one has been convicted of their deaths.