Gushungo Bombing: ‘We had been warned to comply’

Source: Gushungo Bombing: ‘We had been warned to comply’ – NewsDay Zimbabwe April 25, 2016

ZIMBABWE National Army artillery officer Borman Ngwenya, who is facing a sabotage charge arising from the foiled bombing plot at Gushungo Dairy project plant, last Friday claimed that a top army official identified as Major Blessing Mashava warned them in a text message to comply with orders from Police Support Unit officers who had laid an ambush or else they would be shot.

by PAIDAMOYO MUZULU

Ngwenya said Mashava warned them through a text message that they would be intercepted by armed police officers on their way to the dairy plant in January this year.

He was arrested together with military intelligence officers Solomon Makumbe and Silas Pfupa and president of Zimbabwe People’s Front Party, Owen Kuchata.

“Major Mashava sent a text message to Makumbe’s phone saying we should comply with the orders from the armed Support Unit laying in ambush or we will be killed if we tried to flee, in response to a message that alerted him that we were on our way to the target,” Ngwenya said.

Ngwenya said this under cross-examination from State counsel Michael Reza.

Ngwenya also told the court he was instrumental in busting the plot after he influenced Kuchata to abort the mission on January 21.

“I convinced Kuchata not to go on January 21 because the police had not yet been informed by the military of the plot and to make an ambush,” he said.

Ngwenya further stated he did not tell the arresting details that he was from the military because he was never questioned at the scene.

“The military superiors at the scene of arrest, among them Mashava, told the police that we were undercover agents,” he added.

Ngwenya further said the military had never told him directly that it disowned them after their arrest.

Ngwenya rejected Reza’s opinion that the military had disowned him because it did not provide him with a lawyer after his arrest.

He argued he hired his own lawyer soon after the arrest and that was not because he had been dumped.

The court also heard that Kuchata made a confession at the scene of arrest after he was tortured by the police using a piercing light, like a torch.

The trial continues today.