JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 129 ____________________________________________________________________ On 13 July 2001, Attorney General Andrew Chigovera reportedly ordered police to investigate the case. ‘I have asked the police to investigate these murders because I feel there is a basis for criminal investigations. I cannot tell you how long the investigation is going to take, but you can rest assured that no stone will be left unturned.” [Daily News, “Attorney General order police to investigate Chiminya’s killers’, 13 July 2001.] The Attorney General’s response came after MDC parliamentarians had called for his resignation in the previous week for failing to prosecute alleged perpetrators of violence. Yet on 30 August 2001, reacting to a parliamentary question on why Joseph Mwale and Kainos Tom Zimunya had not been prosecuted, Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Patrick Chinamasa contradicted the Attorney-General, saying the court had no legal right to order a prosecution. [Daily News, ‘Chinamasa says High Court has no legal right to order prosecutions’, 30 August 2001.] Another lawyer involved in the case … confirmed that in March 2001 her legal team had subpoenaed the police docket, which contained the record of the police investigations into the double murder, but that police failed to produce it. ‘We were told it was lost or in different places, but it was never given to us,’ [she] said. [Amnesty International interview, December 2001.] In May 2002 the office of the Attorney General reiterated its request, asking the police to submit the results of their investigation. However, at the time of writing (June 2002), there was no indication that this request had been complied with. Extending the case study: alleged activities of security forces in Chimanimani Joseph Mwale, the CIO officer named in the High Court as one of two individuals alleged to have killed Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika on 15 April 2000, is a senior CIO operative in Chimanimani, in the east of Zimbabwe. Allegations of human rights violations committed by Joseph Mwale in Chimanimani during 2001 and 2002 have been made by victims and by lawyers representing victims. The allegations have appeared in several press reports as well as reports made directly to Amnesty International. [Zimbabwe Standard, “CIO Officer Spearheads Chimanimani Terror”, 7 April 2002; Daily News, ‘State agents threaten lawyers representing MDC suspects’, 1 May 2002.]. Amnesty International believes that there is sufficient credible evidence to justify a prompt, thorough and independent criminal investigation into the allegations against Joseph Mwale; at the time of writing there was no evidence that an investigation had been undertaken by police. In December 2001, Amnesty International interviewed several victims of intimidation in Chimanimani who identified CIO officers as perpetrators of intimidation and torture.