Zimbabwe: The Face of Torture and Organised Violence The previous report also made mention of the lack of investigation by the authorities of alleged human rights violations, and this continues to be the case. There has been no reported action on allegations of torture committed in the run-up to the March 2002 presidential elections by Detective Chief Inspector Henry Dowa in the Law and Order Section of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP)11. Another ongoing example of the failure to bring to account alleged perpetrators is the case of CIO agent Joseph Mwale in connection with political murders in the lead-up to the June 2000 parliamentary elections. In its response to the African Commission mission report the Zimbabwe Government claimed that all crimes are dealt with, though REDRESS’ research has revealed no formal investigation or prosecution. CASE STUDY THREE In March 1999 three American nationals were arrested at Harare International Airport on their way to Switzerland. The men, Gary Blanchard, John Dixon and Joseph Pettijohn, were subsequently charged with various statutory offences relating to the illegal possession of firearms. Before trial the men brought an urgent application in the Supreme Court not only stating that they had been severely tortured after their arrest, but that the conditions in which they were being held in a maximum security prison pending trial constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Amongst other things it emerged that the men were held in solitary confinement, stripped naked each night and shackled in leg irons to their beds where the lights in their cells were kept on 24 hours a day. This had gone on for about five weeks. The then Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay found against the State which did not deny the allegations, and ordered a halt to the various forms of ill-treatment. As mark of the court’s disapproval legal costs were awarded to the men on the higher scale. The court also noted that stripping and keeping a prisoner naked from late afternoon until early morning was in contempt of a Supreme Court ruling several years earlier outlawing the practice, and was aggravated by the use of leg-irons. Far worse was to emerge at the men’s trial in September 1999. In the days after their arrest they were brutally tortured by police officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, which torture included electric shocks to their genitals and beatings to the soles of their feet. Full details had been given to a magistrate at their first court appearance in March, and their lawyers also sent a detailed report to Attorney General Patrick Chinamasa. At the trial, both State and private doctors gave evidence consistent with what the men had said had happened to them, including blows to the soles of their feet with a blunt instrument. The trial judge concluded that the police had indeed severely tortured the men, and noted that although one Detective Inspector Matema had said the State had been investigating the complaints “ the only conclusion this court can come to is either nothing is being done about the complaints or if something is being done, clearly incompetence seems to be the situation, because it does not take four months to come up with a completed investigation about this, in which it 11 See REDRESS. The Case of Henry Dowa: The United Nations and Zimbabwe under the spotlight, January 2004, LONDON: REDRESS TRUST. Here it is worth noting that there have been further secondments of members of the ZRP to the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), and it would be interesting to know whether the UN undertook any screening of these policemen. According to Zimbabwean human rights groups the UN made no approach for information in respect of these policemen, which is surprising when UNMIK itself requested that there be an investigation of Dowa by the Zimbabwean authorities. 10