JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 22 ____________________________________________________________________ Inspector Majora detained them as well. He ordered all police details to be armed and distributed live ammunition. Assistant Inspector Majora then proceeded to lecture the lawyers about the evils of the MDC, stating that as educated people they ought to be wiser and not allow themselves to be used by white people. He threatened to call Mr Chenjerai Hunzvi, war veterans and the army to further assault the lawyers. As stated elsewhere in this report, black lawyers representing white farmers falsely accused of public violence in the Chinhoyi area in August 2001 were subjected to threats by war veterans, and there was a suggestion that thugs had been hired to deal with them. On 3 June 2002 the President and Secretary of the Law Society of Zimbabwe were arrested on palpably false charges, based on two documents which are crude forgeries. They were held in custody for a few days in very poor conditions of detention. The Law Society has been outspoken in defence of the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Zimbabwe and the arrest of its top officers is widely seen as an attempt to intimidate the Law Society.27 On 28 April 2002 two Mutare lawyers who had gone to represent some MDC supporters arrested for allegedly petrol-bombing the house of Joseph Mwale, a CIO officer, were accused of being “terrorists” and anti-ZANU (PF). The lawyers said Mwale and the officer in charge of the station drove them out of the police station. One of the lawyers said: “It was a nightmare. They labelled us terrorists and threatened to physically harm us if we pursued the case. I will never go back there. I will never return to that police station on any case involving Mwale. He is bad news.”28 As stated earlier, on 16 August 2002 war veterans in Chipinge assaulted a magistrate who had refused to remand in custody some MDC members. Soon afterwards they then proceeded to the premises of the law firm Matutu, Kwirira and Associates demanding to see the accused’s lawyer, Langton Mhungu. Mr Mhungu said he fled when the ZANU (PF) supporters descended on the law firm. Contacted on his cellphone, Mr Mhungu said he was working towards evacuating his family. “The situation here is tense,” he said. “They came singing liberation war songs, demanding my blood. Fortunately my colleagues locked me up in a room and they failed to find