via Inmates erroneously freed from prison – New Zimbabwe 23/02/2015
PRISON officials at Harare Central Prison are covering up the erroneous release of two convicted inmates whose sentences were supposed to expire in 2016, NewZimbabwe.com has heard.
The unlawful release of the inmates who had served a three year jail term each happened two weeks ago when there was a mass release of inmates whose sentences had expired.
Highly placed sources at Harare Central Prison said the Prison’s second-in- charge one Superintendent Ngirandi failed to calculate the number of days the two inmates had served resulting in the blunder.
“Over the past week our number of inmates has not been tallying until we revisited the warrants of the inmates who were released the past week, and that was when we realized that there were two inmates who were supposed to be out next year who were released early this month,” said an official who cannot be named because he is not allowed to talk to the media.
The official said they visited the two inmates’ houses but could not find them.
“We have gone to the given addresses of the two released convicts on several occasions but our efforts are not yielding any result as we are continuously told that they do not reside at the given addresses,” added the official.
The official said all the searches were being done clandestinely without reporting to the Prison’s regional head offices.
“There seems to be the feeling that it is normal to try and sweep the cases under the carpet because a lot of such cases have happened before and were resolved without notifying the regional offices, but what is wrong is the victimization of junior officers who were on duty the day of the unlawful release of the inmates.
“There are two junior officers who are now being victimized by the seniors over the mistake which they (seniors) should be answerable to”.
COMMENTS
The chaos in the Prison circus continues. People braking into Gwanda prison to steal, now this. This is really getting comical. Its like they were asked “who wants to go home” . To crown it all no one has lost their job. But then again what can you expect from this administration. Look at the appointment of Mahofa.