Back to Index

Government abandons prosecution of 44 Daily News journalists
Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
October 25, 2005

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14812

Reporters Without Borders voiced relief today that the Zimbabwean authorities have abandoned the prosecution of 44 Daily News journalists who were to have been tried by a Harare court on 12 October on charges of working without an accreditation issued by the Media and Information Commission, the government-controlled body set up to regulate the news media.

The 44 journalist and their defence lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, went to the court on 12 October but none of the court officials including the judge in charge of the case knew about the hearing.

The head of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), which publishes the Daily News, said the attorney-general’s office evidently decided it could not continue the prosecution after Kelvin Jakachira, the first Daily News journalist to tried on these charges, was acquitted on 31 August. "The government is too embarrassed to proceed with the prosecution so they decided to let the case slowly die a natural death," the head of the ANZ said.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP