Source: Tsvangirai aide request granted – DailyNews Live
Tendai Kamhungira 27 April 2017
HARARE – High Court judge Hlekani Mwayera yesterday granted MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai’s spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka’s application for an
amendment of his claim into United States dollars.
Tamborinyoka – demanding $200 000 compensation from the State after he was
allegedly brutally attacked by Harare Central Police Station-based cops in
2007 – seeks to have police commissioner-general Augustine Chihuri and
other officials held accountable.
The trained journalist is pursuing the application, initially lodged in
2007, and is now seeking the court to amend the papers for the claim to be
made in United States dollars.
When he initially made the application, Tamborinyoka was seeking Z$20
billion, but now wants it to be substituted with $200 000.
His lawyer Charles Kwaramba yesterday confirmed that the application had
been granted in Tamborinyoka’s favour and had not been contested by the
State.
“The amendment has been granted by the court,” Kwaramba said yesterday.
In the application, Tamborinyoka cited Home Affairs minister Ignatius
Chombo, Chihuri, assistant commissioner Musarashana Mabunda, police
officers only identified as J Chani and Kambanje, and the
officer-in-charge CID Law and Order, as respondents.
He argued that his application for amendment was premised on the basis
that the Zimbabwean dollar is no longer legal tender, since adoption of
the multi-currency system in 2009.
The incident leading to the current litigation took place in March 2007,
when police made a surprise raid of MDC headquarters, Harvest House in the
Harare CBD, and arrested Tamborinyoka together with several others.
“At the time of the arrest, no warrant of arrest had been issued against
plaintiff (Tamborinyoka). Plaintiff had not committed any offence. He was
neither in the act of committing nor on the verge of committing an
offence. There was no reasonable suspicion that plaintiff had committed or
was about to commit any offence,” Tamborinyoka said in his court papers.
He said he was not informed of the reasons for the arrest, but was
subsequently charged, resulting in him spending two-and-a-half-months in
remand prison.
The charges against him were subsequently dropped and he claims that his
arrest was therefore unlawful.
Before his release, he had been subjected to interrogations and assaults
by police officers.
“The assailants, who were more than five in number, were using a baseball
stick, metal objects, open hands, fists, booted feet and all sorts of
weaponry.
“Plaintiff together with fellow detainees was forced to lie on their
bellies facing the floor. They were made to make different noises
resembling nocturnal animals and birds,” Tamborinyoka said.
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