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Zimbabwe court says passport seizures illegal
Cris Chinaka, Reuters
December 16, 2005

http://za.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's High Court on Thursday ruled that it was illegal for President Robert Mugabe's government to seize passports under a new law barring his critics from travel.

The ruling was the result of a legal challenge by newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube, who contested the government's seizure of his passport last week and won an admission from state lawyers that the law under which it was seized needed further legislation to support it.

Ncube's passport and that of a spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party were returned earlier this week, but the legal case carried on.

High Court Judge Chinembiri Bhunu said on Thursday that the government had "erred" in seizing Ncube's passport. The publisher's weekly Mail and Guardian newspaper have been critical of both Mugabe and the MDC.

"It is declared that the purported invalidation or withdrawal or cancellation of the applicant's passport is unlawful, null, void and of no force and effect," Bhunu said in a ruling in which he also ordered three government officials to pay the cost of Ncube's lawsuit.

Although Mugabe's government has not directly commented on the passport seizures, the Attorney-General's Office was quoted on Thursday as saying the state had returned the confiscated documents pending the enactment of an extra law.

The law under which the passports were seized was part of a constitutional amendment passed earlier this year allowing the government to impose sweeping travel bans on "traitors".

The state-owned Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Fatima Maxwell, a senior lawyer in the Attorney-General's Office, as saying: "The constitutional amendment has to be accompanied by enabling legislation."

Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF in August used its parliamentary majority to push through a set of constitutional changes, among them a provision allowing the government to impose travel bans on "traitors" or those deemed harming national interests.

Analysts say the new crackdown on critics shows panic within ZANU-PF ranks in the face of a deepening economic crisis many blame on 81-year-old Mugabe -- Zimbabwe's sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980.

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