Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has been slapped with what will be his first international criminal court action for torture and unlawful arrest.
Former army captain Albert Matapo, the United Crusader for Achieving Democracy (UCAD) party leader, who endured 7 whole years under unlawful arrest in 2007, made the chilling announcement at the weekend. Breaking the news in the ZimEye newsroom, Matapo who now lives in exile, revealed Mugabe is in trouble.
A High Court (Zimbabwe) verdict seen by ZimEye.com declares that Matapo’s 7 year prison stay (with neither conviction nor trial), was illegal.
Matapo was in 2007 accused of trying to topple President Robert Mugabe and replace him with Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa. This was at a time when expelled former VP Joice Mujuru was in charge and Matapo was subjected to four days of torture having been blindfolded and driven away at high speed for interrogation for four days, afterwhich he was imprisoned for alleged treason for which neither conviction nor trial materialised for a whole 7 years.
His alleged accomplice, Mnangagwa was never touched.
High Court judge Justice Yunus Omerjee in a 2010 ruling said of Matapo and several of his colleagues, “It is apparent that the appellants should not have been commuted to custody.”
ZANU PF legal analysts scoffed at Matapo saying it is impossible for Mugabe’s court prosecution to proceed since Zimbabwe is not signatory to the Rome statute that extends the jurisdiction powers to the International Criminal Court at the Hague. But independent legal analysts said it is still possible for ICC to prosecute such cases simply utilising UN special charters.