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Judge President sues newspaper
MISA-Zimbabwe
August 30, 2005

High Court Judge President Paddington Garwe has filed a Z$250 million libel suit against the privately owned Zimbabwe Independent weekly newspaper.

This follows the publication of a story on 30 July 2004 in which the paper claimed that the judge had been blocked from passing judgment in the treason trial of opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The paper claimed that assessors Major Misheck Nyandoro and Joseph Dangarembizi had blocked the passing of judgment after they demanded to see the recorded transcripts of the proceedings.

Vincent Kahiya and Augustine Mutero, the editor and reporter of the Zimbabwe Independent, are cited as respondents in the matter.

Justice Garwe subsequently acquitted Tsvangirai of treason.

In his lawsuit filed at the High Court through his lawyers Chihambakwe, Mutizwa and Partners, the Zimbabwean judge president claims:

"The said words meant and were understood to mean, by the general readership locally and internationally that the plaintiff (Justice Garwe) had reached a decision on Tsvangirai’s treason trial without discussing the evidence with assessors."

He further asserts that the Independent story meant that if the assessors had not made the demands, he would have "delivered a single man’s judgment" and that the judge would have acted unlawfully making him a corrupt and unjust person

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