US embassy cable - 02HARARE1418

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 001418 
 
SIPDIS 
 
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR JFRAZER 
LONDON FOR CGURNEY 
PARIS FOR CNEARY 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/13/2012 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, ASEC, ZI 
SUBJECT: ZIMBABWE: MULTIPLE REASONS BEHIND ARREST OF LAW 
SOCIETY PRESIDENT 
 
 
Classified By: Political Officer Todd Faulk for reasons 1.5 (b) 
and (d) 
 
1.  (C) Summary: On June 11, Law Society of Zimbabwe 
President Sternford Moyo described to poloff in detail his 
June 3-5 detention by Zimbabwe Republic Police and the 
farcical court proceedings that resulted in his release.  The 
Law Society Secretary, Wilbert Mapombere, was also arrested 
and held during this period, and on June 4, police arrested 
and interrogated the entire staff of the Law Society for 
about four hours.  Moyo stated that the police clearly did 
not have a case, the evidence of his supposed involvement in 
planning mass action with the opposition MDC and British High 
Commission was fabricated, and that the Government caused 
High Court Judge President Paddington Garwe, who oversaw his 
case, to keep Moyo and Mapombere on remand in spite of the 
lack of evidence.  There are a number of reasons the 
Government of Zimbabwe is trying to intimidate him now, Moyo 
speculated, including his resistance to a planned Government 
takeover of the Law Society and his plans to speak out in 
international fora on the deterioration of the rule of law in 
Zimbabwe.  End summary. 
 
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The First Arrest 
---------------- 
 
2.  (C) On June 11, poloff met with Law Society of Zimbabwe 
(LSZ) President Sternford Moyo in the offices of his law firm 
Scanlen & Holderness to discuss his June 3-5 detention and 
the reasons behind it.  Moyo is one of the most respected 
lawyers in Zimbabwe and through the LSZ, which represents 
Zimbabwe's legal profession, he has been a steadfast defender 
of the rule of law in Zimbabwe.  In the early afternoon of 
June 3, police arrested Law Society Secretary Wilbert 
Mapombere.  While Moyo was attempting to arrange legal 
representation for Mapombere, a squad of riot police burst 
into his law firm office with a search warrant and said he 
was under arrest for violating the Public Order and Security 
Act (POSA).  Moyo protested that their warrant was very vague 
and their search would violate attorney-client privilege; 
they searched his office anyway, but did not find anything of 
interest.  The police then took Moyo to his residence in the 
suburb of Kambanji, presented another search warrant (that 
had the wrong street number on it), and searched those 
premises.  There, the police took a paper Moyo had presented 
in April to the SADC Lawyers Association conference in 
Livingstone, Zambia.  The police officers then conveyed Moyo 
to Harare Central Prison, where he briefly spoke to several 
lawyers who were not given the specific reasons for his 
arrest.  Police inspectors presented to Moyo two letters, one 
supposedly signed by Mapombere and addressed to the British 
High Commission, and another written to Moyo by MDC 
Secretary-General Welshman Ncube.  The letter attributed to 
 
SIPDIS 
Moyo, which was poorly written, in the third person, and 
filled with grammatical and spelling errors, had him planning 
to organize "peaceful mass action" with the support of the 
MDC.  (Note: The MDC and British High Commission in Harare 
have both patently denied ever writing or receiving such 
letters and accused the GOZ of fabricating them.  End note.) 
In a statement to the police, Moyo denied the authenticity of 
the letters and noted the section of the POSA the police said 
he had supposedly violated did not exist.  The inspectors 
eventually agreed there was no reasonable cause for 
continuing to detain Moyo, and released him about 10:30 pm 
that evening, and Moyo returned home. 
 
----------------- 
The Second Arrest 
----------------- 
 
3.  (C) After midnight the same evening, police officers 
returned to Moyo's home and said they had been instructed to 
detain him again.  In protest, Moyo called Attorney-General 
Andrew Chigovera, who contacted Police Commissioner Augustine 
Chihuri.  After about an hour, Chihuri called back and said 
the officers who gave the orders could not be reached and 
there was nothing he could do.  The police took Moyo to 
Highlands police station, where his jacket, socks and shoes 
were taken and he was placed in a smelly, unheated cell with 
nine other prisoners.  When he asked if the water covering 
the floor was clean, he was told it was the overflow from the 
broken toilet.  The one blanket in the cell smelled of urine 
and was covered with lice and fleas.  The cold and the stench 
prevented Moyo from getting any sleep.  At about 7 am, June 
4, he was transferred back to Harare Central Prison, where he 
was booked.  Around 3 pm, police took him, Mapombere and the 
five staff members of the Law Society (who were arrested 
earlier in the afternoon) to Lake Chivero, a wilderness park 
25 km west of Harare.  On the way, police officers told the 
staff members they were going to a park filled with lions, 
apparently in an attempt to frighten them into saying 
something incriminating against Moyo or Mapombere.  Upon 
arrival, the detainees were separated and four police 
officers were assigned to each staff member, and they were 
each taken to a different area of the park.  They were 
interrogated about Moyo's and Mapombere's activities for four 
hours, but none of them said anything incriminating.  At 
about 8 pm, they were all returned to Harare, where the staff 
members were released; Moyo and Mapombere were taken to 
separate police stations for another night in jail. 
 
---------------- 
Courtroom Antics 
---------------- 
 
4.  (C) In the morning of June 5, Moyo--who had not been 
offered food or water during his detention or given access to 
his attorneys since his first arrest--was taken to the High 
Court for a hearing.  During the proceedings, the prosecutor 
complained to Justice Garwe (also the Judge President of the 
High Court) that the police had consistently refused to give 
him reasons for the detention of the Law Society leaders. 
(Note: Moyo heard later that Garwe had repeatedly delayed the 
hearing to give the police and the Attorney-General's office 
more time to come up with evidence and that Supreme Court 
Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a known ruling party supporter, 
the Justice Ministry Permanent Secretary and another GOZ 
official were seen entering Garwe's chambers just before the 
hearing.  End note.)  After Moyo's attorneys presented their 
application for release, the prosecutor had no affidavit to 
challenge it.  Garwe chastised the police for failing to 
provide reasons for Moyo's detention, remarked that he found 
their evidential letters "defective" (see paragraph 2), and 
stated that even though the police mistakenly charged Moyo 
under a nonexistent clause of the POSA, he believed he knew 
which clause they meant.  Despite all these failings of the 
State's case, Garwe found, incredibly, that Moyo's detention 
was lawful and that the letters presented by the police were 
grounds for further investigation.  Those in attendance were 
so appalled that no one stood as Garwe left the courtroom. 
Even the police investigators, who expected the case to be 
dismissed, were aghast.  As the State presented no official 
challenge, and the 48-hour limit for detention was up, Moyo 
and Mapombere were free to go.  Only after the 
Attorney-General contacted Moyo's lawyers later in the day 
was an arrangement made to put Moyo and Mapombere on remand 
(bail).  They both appeared in magistrate's court on June 6, 
when they were each required to pay Z$20,000 (US$43) bail and 
surrender their passports.  They will be on remand until 
August 1. 
 
--------------------------------------- 
Several Reasons Behind the Intimidation 
--------------------------------------- 
 
5.  (C) Moyo elaborated on a number of possible reasons the 
GOZ has chosen to try to intimidate and harass him now, even 
though the Law Society has routinely spoken out in the past 
against the erosion of the rule of law in Zimbabwe: 
 
a) The Justice Ministry has hatched a plan to indoctrinate 
all prosecutors, judges and magistrates in the history of the 
anti-colonial struggle.  The plan would have Army instructors 
setting up courses at the Judicial College, a heretofore 
independent institution that trains mainly magistrates in 
legal procedures.  As a member of the Judicial College board, 
Moyo opposed this plan and said the Law Society would 
consider a legal challenge to it if it went forward.  Garwe 
and Chidyausiku, who are also board members, replied that 
they would be willing to hold the courses outside the 
Judicial College, but would insist on the indoctrination.  As 
a counteroffer, Moyo proposed to have members of the Law 
Society teach the courses.  Chidyausiku, who is the board 
chairman, said this sounded like an American-funded "Trojan 
horse" designed to frustrate the Third Chimurenga and refused 
the offer. 
 
b) Moyo told poloff that all government ministers are under 
enormous pressure from Mugabe to come up with ways to gain 
control of professional workers and the organizations that 
represent them, such as the LSZ.  Justice Minister Patrick 
Chinamasa has repeatedly told Moyo that he wants the Law 
Society's charter changed so that he has the power to appoint 
the president, secretary and a majority of the councilors 
that oversee the organization.  Currently, he appoints only 
two out of the 12 councilors.  Moyo told Chinamasa that he 
would resist such a move.  Shortly after Moyo said this, 
Information Minister Jonathan Moyo came out with a statement 
(in April) saying there was an "urgent need" to amend the 
Legal Practitioners' Act, which governs the operations of the 
LSZ.  Police have also gone to local banks in an attempt to 
freeze LSZ assets; the banks have thus far refused to 
cooperate without a court order. 
 
c) Last month, the LSZ released its annual report, which was 
critical of the Government's erosion of the rule of law, the 
Constitution's allowance for the President to pack the 
Supreme Court, and a number of Supreme Court decisions that 
demonstrate that the highest court in the land can no longer 
be counted on to protect Zimbabweans' basic human rights. 
 
d) The GOZ wants to prevent articulate speakers from 
criticizing GOZ policy in international fora.  Moyo believes 
the GOZ, in part, wanted an excuse to seize his passport so 
he could not travel this week to Durban, where he was to 
present a paper on international press freedom to the 
International Bar Association.  He was also due to go to 
Montreal later this year to help vet legal officers for the 
bar of the International Criminal Court.  Chinamasa has 
called Moyo several times to question his patriotism over the 
release of damning papers and reports.  "It is precisely 
because I am a patriot that I have to speak out about what is 
happening," Moyo told Chinamasa. 
 
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Comment 
------- 
 
6.  (C)  We fear the arrest and detention of the LSZ leaders 
is a precedent for an expanded campaign of GOZ intimidation 
against Zimbabwean NGOs.  Now that the MDC has been 
effectively stymied in the aftermath of the March 
presidential election, the GOZ may be turning more of its 
attention to outspoken civil society organizations.  Any one 
of the reasons Moyo mentioned would be enough to begin 
harassing Moyo, but all of them combined present the GOZ with 
a compelling reason to make a greater effort to hamper LSZ 
activities.  If the GOZ cannot bend Moyo to its wishes or 
take control of the organization, it may attempt to close it 
down altogether.  Other active NGOs that speak out against 
the GOZ's increasingly repressive tactics, like the Legal 
Resources Foundation, the Amani Trust, and Zimbabwe Lawyers 
for Human Rights, are prime candidates for similar treatment. 
 With the judiciary under firmer GOZ control, as seen in 
Garwe's blatantly partisan handling of the sloppily contrived 
case against Moyo, we can expect the GOZ to try more of these 
actions in the future.  The GOZ remains bent on cowing anyone 
who dares to resist its tyrannical edicts.  End comment. 
 
SULLIVAN