Mugabe plans to appeal rival's acquittal

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government plans to appeal the acquittal earlier this month of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on capital charges of treason, acting attorney general Bharat Patel said.

“The acquittal judgment has many flaws and we don’t think it should stand unchallenged,” said Patel, in comments published in a newspaper.

“Certainly by the middle of November we should have filed the appeal,” he said.

David Coltart, shadow minister of justice for Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, said the 52-year-old former trade union leader would return from a current tour of southern African states to face renewed trial, which may prevent him from travelling until the appeal is heard.

Zimbabwe does not have a “double jeopardy” law that prohibits trial twice on the same accusation.

This allows the state to appeal the October 15 finding of High Court Judge Paddington Garwe dismissing charges that Tsvangirai asked Canadian-based political consultant Ari Ben Menashe to assassinate 80-year-old Mugabe in 2001, at a secretly videotaped meeting in Montreal.

If convicted, Tsvangirai could be sentenced to death.

The appeal before Zimbabwe’s highest tribunal, the seven member Supreme Court, could be delayed up to three years.

The court is headed by chief justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a former minister under Mugabe, who was appointed when his internationally respected predecessor, Anthony Gubbay, quit in the face of death threats.

Patel denied the appeal was “political” but “was made on strong legal grounds after carefully analysing the judgement”.

Tsvangirai, deprived of his passport and unable to travel for nearly three years while his High Court trial was pending, last week met South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, to the dismay of Mugabe’s government in Harare.

Tsvangirai faces a second High Court trial on separate treason charges, arising from his 2002 call for “mass action” to demand fresh elections. He is due back next week for a routine remand hearing but no date has been set for a formal trial.