BRUCE SIBANDA, HAHARE
Police have detained Zimbabwe Independent editor Vincent Kahiya and news editor Constantine Chimakure for naming members of the notorious Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) believed to be involved in abductions of activists of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and officials of a human rights organisation.
No charges have been preferred against the two journalist and they would appear in court on Tuesday.
Briefly speaking through a telephone while at Harare Central Police Station, Chimakure said they have been made to sign warned and cautioned statements.
“We have singed the warned cautioned statements and told that we will spend the night at the cells and taken to court tomorrow” he said
This morning four plain clothed officers stormed the papers offices shortly after 8 am and demand to be let in.
But after waiting for close to an hour outside the premises they left a note t the security guard for the two instructing them to “immediately report to Central Police Station’s Law and Order Section”
Kahiya and Constantine Chimakure later went to the station with lawyer Innocent Chagonda.
The story that has angered the fragile inclusive government which appeared in the weekly newspaper last Friday is headlined ‘ CIO, police role in activists’ abduction revealed” last Friday.
It named some Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) agents and Harare police officers as having been involved in last year’s abductions and torture on 32 MDC and human rights activists.
The officers named were Assistant Director External of the CIO retired Brigadier Asher Walter Tapfumanei, police superintendents Reggies Chitekwe and Joel Tenderere, Detective Inspectors Elliot Muchada and Joshua Muzanango, officer commanding CID Homicide Crispen Makedenge, Chief Superintendent Peter Magwenzi, and Senior Assistant Commissioner Simon Nyathi.
Sources at the publication say moral is an all time low and fear that colleagues would be abused by police.
Said one journalist “Normal working proceedings have been interrupted. A diary meeting that normally takes place a 10am on Monday’s did not take place. It’s a but tense”
Early this year, the then state security minister Didymus Mutasa ordered the Attorney General (AG) not to disclose the identities of the abductors.
Accordingly, the AG refused to release the names when his officers were asked twice to do so in court by the defence counsel for the suspects.
A senior Zanu PF member and minister of Media, Information and Publicity Webster Shamu three weeks ago threatened to “punish” reports from Zimbabwe Independent over carrying cabinet deliberations.
Shamu was incensed by a story by the paper which said “a fierce row” had erupted in Cabinet.
Said Shamu, “Government reminds the media in general and the Zimbabwe Independent in particular, that Cabinet deliberations are protected by the country’s laws. Publishing deliberations of Cabinet or building stories in the name of that august body, outside of what Government has authorized and/or released, is a punishable offense,”
In its lead story headlined “Fierce row rocks Cabinet”, the paper claimed that a conflict arose between Finance Minister Tendai Biti and several Zanu-PF ministers duringa Cabinet meeting.
Early this year the editor of the government-controlled Chronicle, Brezhnev Malaba, with his young reporter Nduduzo Tshuma was charged with criminal defamation over a news article published in February which exposed allegations of corruption at the Grain Marketing Board (GMB).