The number of dead inmates from the Friday 13th of March shooting of prisoners following their food riot has risen to 15, ZimEye.com can reveal.
This came as Justice Munister Emmerson Mnangagwa and his juniors in the Prison Service, continued to suppress the figures of the deceased.
Mnangagwa’s office has embarassingly admitted that the prison authorities opened gunfire on the rioting prisoners instead of restraining them, a statement that has sharply contradicted that of the Prison Services’ spokesperson who claimed that no one was shot, and that police officers fired what she termed were “blank bullets” on the prisoners.
To date the Prison services have officially said only 5 prisoners were killed after initially claiming only one had died but were forced to raise their records as the facts weighed against their fabrications.
Denials by the officials were seen as an attempt to cover-up and there were calls by concerned prison guards for government to probe the incident in order to establish what actually happened, and to get the numbers of inmates who were either injured or had been killed.
They have asked that the parliamentary committee dealing with prisons should urgently visit the maximum security prison to see for themselves the injuries that were inflicted on the prisoners.
“There was a serious bloodbath. The truth needs to be told,” a prison guard who was involved in the action to quell the riots, said.