insults referring to the octogenarian leader and his family. The magistrate ruled that there were several inconsistences between the two State witnesses who testified during the trial. In his defence, Manditsera, denied uttering the offensive words and charged that Murenje, Manditsera’s supervisor was determined to incriminate him by bringing up the insult charges Manditsera . Furthermore he objected to being supervised by his superior while at a bottle store. On 11 October, four women were badly injured and hospitalised. One of the women who had been brutalised by an armed officer of the Zimbabwe Republic Police, was admitted to intensive care under critical condition. She had been protesting against the State-owned coal miner Hwange Colliery Company who had failed to pay their husbands’ salaries for several months. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) moved in to assist the women when the demonstration broke out on Monday 7 October and secured the release of the two women who had been detained at Hwange Police Station. On 11 October, human rights lawyer Denford Halimani, a member of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights was still to be granted access to his client, James Chidhakwa, an Information Technology officer and the Secretary for Security and Defence in the MDC-T party’s Youth Assembly, who was detained at Harare Central Police Station after being taken from his work offices in Harare on Friday morning it took over four hours for Halimani to be allowed access to see his client. September On 28 September, Zimbabwean police arrested a woman and her toddler in connection with the alleged bombing of some Zanu PF sub-offices in Harare’s high-density suburb of Highfield. Spiwe Pambayi aged 32, together with her one year-old baby, Clifford Mbewe, were forced to spend two nights in police custody, first at Machipisa Police Station and then at Harare Central Police Station. Police alleged that an informant overheard the 32 year-old Pambayi, a self-employed vendor, saying “fire-fire operation yatakaita nezuro yakabudirira,” which the police translated as, “the firefire operation that we conducted yesterday was a success”. Pambayi denied the allegation when police detectives recorded a cautioned statement from her in the company of her lawyer, which was released on Monday 30 September after the detectives indicated that they would carry out further investigations. According to media reports, the Zanu PF offices were allegedly petrol-bombed during an attack that reduced the offices together with an adjacent supermarket, Grocery World Supermarket to ashes. On 20 September, a Harare Magistrate Tendai Mahwe acquitted the MDC-T election agents after ruling that State prosecutors had failed to establish a prima facie case against Anna Bvute and Phillip Mabika, who were arrested and charged with destroying the country’s roll of registered voters on the eve of the July 31 elections. They had been arrested on 30 July being accused of stealing voters’ roll from Tauyanarwo Makuza, the Budiriro constituency elections officer. Their lawyers applied for discharge at the close of the State’s case on the basis that the State had failed to prove that the election agents had committed an offence during the first stage of their trial. On 19 September, High Court Judge, Justice Bhunu passed a not guilty verdict on twenty-one of the twenty-nine Glen View activists who included Cynthia Manjoro, Solomon Madzore, Stanford Maengahama, and others. He acquitted them after determining that the State had failed to prove a prima face case against the human rights and political activists and that nothing would be gained by the State by placing them on their defence. The activists had been arrested in 2011 and charged with contravening Section 47 of the Criminal Law Code for allegedly murdering Inspector Mutedza at a bar in Harare’s high density suburb of Glen View. They were also charged with committing public violence in contravention of Section 36 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23. Justice Bhunu criticised police officers for their unprofessional conduct in arresting human rights campaigner Cynthia Manjoro and MDC-T youth assembly president Solomon Madzore along with the other activists as they did not have credible evidence linking them to the commission of the offence. The judge said the police had arrested Manjoro as an inducement for her boyfriend to surrender himself to the police in connection with the commission of the offence. 6