News / Africa
Dozens of white Zimbabweans demonstrate outside Pretoria High Court
28 Mar 2012 at 07:50hrs | Views
Dozens of Zimbabweans demonstrated outside Pretoria High Court yesterday, amid reports that top South African officials and institutions protected high ranking Zanu-PF officials implicated in gross human rights abuses.
South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority is reluctant to prosecute the Zimbabwean tortures under international law because acting on them will soil relations with President Mugabe's government.
Yesterday the South African court was told that the former South African acting national director of public prosecutions, Mokotedi Mpshe, and former acting police commissioner Tim Williams were wrong in refusing to investigate a complaint of crimes against humanity by claiming they did not have those powers.
The Southern African Litigation Centre and the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum want the South African court to review South Africa's refusal to investigate complaints of torture committed by suspects in Zimbabwe, despite a duty to do so under the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act.
The forum and the centre approached the court after the police and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) refused to probe claims of torture by Zimbabwean authorities following a 2007 raid on the Harare headquarters of the Movement for Democratic Change.
The centre submitted to the NPA in March 2008 a number of affidavits in which 17 people attested to having been tortured in police custody. The centre wanted the NPA's Priority Crimes Litigation Unit to probe and prosecute the crimes because the act states that the country is required to investigate and prosecute these crimes regardless of whether they were committed in SA.
Yesterday, the litigation centre and the exiles forum focused on the errors they believe were made by Mr Williams and Mr Mpshe in refusing to investigate the allegations.
There are also claims NPA went as far as manipulation to ensure the investigations into the case did not proceed.
South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority is reluctant to prosecute the Zimbabwean tortures under international law because acting on them will soil relations with President Mugabe's government.
Yesterday the South African court was told that the former South African acting national director of public prosecutions, Mokotedi Mpshe, and former acting police commissioner Tim Williams were wrong in refusing to investigate a complaint of crimes against humanity by claiming they did not have those powers.
The Southern African Litigation Centre and the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum want the South African court to review South Africa's refusal to investigate complaints of torture committed by suspects in Zimbabwe, despite a duty to do so under the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act.
The forum and the centre approached the court after the police and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) refused to probe claims of torture by Zimbabwean authorities following a 2007 raid on the Harare headquarters of the Movement for Democratic Change.
The centre submitted to the NPA in March 2008 a number of affidavits in which 17 people attested to having been tortured in police custody. The centre wanted the NPA's Priority Crimes Litigation Unit to probe and prosecute the crimes because the act states that the country is required to investigate and prosecute these crimes regardless of whether they were committed in SA.
Yesterday, the litigation centre and the exiles forum focused on the errors they believe were made by Mr Williams and Mr Mpshe in refusing to investigate the allegations.
There are also claims NPA went as far as manipulation to ensure the investigations into the case did not proceed.
Source - news
