21 eventually preferred charges of undergoing military training for the purposes of engaging in insurgency and acts of banditry against 15 of those detained and took these accused to court. Until this time, the accused had been denied access to legal and medical practitioners. At the Court the magistrate refused to hear the matter until the accused had been given medical treatment. The intervention of the magistrate came at a crucial moment for one victim of the torture who had collapsed at the court and whose condition appeared life threatening. Although the magistrate had ordered that the remand of the accused take place in hospital, later that night police arrived at the hospital, removed the drips from the arms of the in - patients and took them to the remand prison. When the matter came to court, in sworn affidavits and other testimony the ZRP presented false evidence in an attempt to support their allegations that the 15 members and office-bearers of the MDC had undergone military training in South Africa with a view to overthrowing the Zimbabwean government by force. On the basis of this perjury, all 15 accused persons were denied bail from the time of their arrest and most spent four months in custody as a result. In ultimately ordering the release on bail of some of the 15, in a judgment delivered on the 24 th July, 2007, the judge noted that the allegations against them were vague and that the police kept revising even the dates on which they were supposed to have undergone training, first alleging that it had taken place in 2006, and then, presumably to counter the alibis proffered by the accused, changed the dates to a period extending from 2002 to 2006.46 Not only that, but the Court concluded that the place where ZRP alleged the training took place did not exist: “The police had alleged that the applicants had trained at a farm known as Lala Bundu Farm. When challenged to show on the map where Lala Bundu Farm was they failed to do so. It turned out to be non-existent.”47 Accomplices who were said to have implicated the accused persons “vigorously denied doing so.” Other alleged accomplices, it transpired, were fictitious: “The applicants [i.e. the accused] went on to further point out that in a desperate attempt the State even claimed that it had evidence from one Peter Chindodana and one John Zhiwawo but these turned out to be fictitious persons who did not exist. When the State was ordered by the court to produce these individuals to show that they existed it failed to do so.”48 Significantly, the judge observed that all the accused persons had proffered alibis “which the police had never bothered to investigate in an effort to rebut them. Their alibis therefore remain intact.”49 During the raid on the Harvest House offices, much of the MDC’s office equipment, including computers, was confiscated or damaged. The torture and extended incarceration of the MDC 46 Page 2 of the judgment. Page 7 of the judgment. 48 Page 7 of the judgment. 49 Page 2 of the judgement. 47