JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 88 ____________________________________________________________________ Supreme Court dismissed the State’s appeal against the High Court order for their release and issued warrants of liberation in favour of the two men, who had been in custody for six months. For two weeks senior prison officers at the prison in Bulawayo where the two accused were being held refused to comply with these court orders. The two prison officers confirmed they had received the court orders and warrants of liberation, and openly admitted that they had defied them. They said they had done so because they were awaiting instructions from their superiors. On 27 June 2002 the Attorney-General’s office applied to the magistrates courts in Bulawayo for the indictment of the two accused so that they would remain in prison until 11 November 2002. The application was granted by a magistrate while the prison officials were appearing before the High Court on charges of contempt of court. The effect of indicting the two accused for trial is that any previous grant of bail falls away, and they will be kept in custody until their trial unless defence counsel succeeds in a fresh application for bail. On 16 July 2002 Mr Justice Lawrence Kamocha granted a provisional order suspending the indictment for trial in High Court of Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, Sony Masara and Army Zulu pending the determination of the matter by the High Court.141 The effect of this order was to bar the Attorney-General’s office from indicting the three for trial on two counts of murder. On the return date, counsel for the three men sought confirmation of the order; the State on the other hand submitted that confirming the order would usurp the AttorneyGeneral’s power, granted him by the Constitution, to institute criminal proceedings without direction or control from any other person or authority. Counsel for the accused argued that this submission was misconceived. In terms of the Constitution the Attorney-General could exercise his power to prosecute only where there was admissible evidence on the basis of which a court might find that there was a reasonable suspicion that the offence charged has been committed, and that therefore the accused should stand trial.142 This rule applied, he said, not only to remand and bail applications but also to cases where the Attorney-General seeks to indict an accused for trial in the High Court and the Attorney-General was obliged to disclose fully to the court the evidence and grounds upon which reliance was placed for the

Select target paragraph3

Add to table of contents