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Simon Mann pardoned in Equatorial Guinea
Munyaradzi Bwanya
November 04, 2009

The terrorists caught a few years ago in a highly publicised drama in the State media and extradited to Equatorial Guinea have been pardoned on humanitarian grounds by the President of that country. The pardon comes a day before the South African President Jacob Zuma visits Guinea. Mann was accused together with a group of largely South African man. This comes as a blow to the systematic racist efforts of the Zimbabwean State policy which hurriedly concluded a Bilateral Agreement with that country to enable that extradition. The motive of this extradition is not very clear, but is of little importance, what it shows is that Mugabe is increasingly running out of human rights violating friends or that at the very least he remains one of the few who are not bothered by issues of compliance with basic protections of persons. It is very likely that the Zimbabwean authorities were not informed of this humanitarian decision prior to pardon of Mann as it is very likely that they may have objected and sought to bring him back to Zimbabwe.

In the Court case against him the State insisted that the extradition did not pose any threats to Mann-s life or liberty, while the defence and other human rights activists put before Justice Rita Makarau evidence pointing to the generally bad treatment of citizens in that country and sought to establish that given the charges of wanting to assassinate and thus remove the President of that country, Simon Mann-s life was at risk especially as the death penalty is still not outlawed in Guinea. This pardon also vindicates the Judge President-s findings in the extradition proceedings that Mann was not being refouled.

The facilitating agreement was never brought before Parliament for approval as is required by the Zimbabwean Constitution. While this lack of compliance with legal requirements is not peculiar to this agreement, it was particularly sad because the Zimbabwean authorities were in a hurry to extradite him. The video footage available and shown depicts the generally low standards prevailing in the Zimbabwean prisons, the access given by the Prisons Authorities to the state media has been denied to all other media houses. The footage also shows some Ministers falling over each other when the President of Guinea visited to facilitate the signing of the treaty. It was reported that because of the sensitivity related to the case and the media attention it received the men arrested on the charges had new sets of clothing tailored for them before ZBC was allowed in. In recent years private video footage has shown the true state of our remand prisons which amount to inhuman and degrading to the prisoners. The officials running the Prisons are said to have enabled torture of both unconvicted and convicted prisoners especially by the President-s Office which make sit clear that the State President is at the very least aware of the state of the prisons and the existence of 'under the raider detention places- as well as the activities in those places. Can it be claimed in later years that all these activities were unknown to the Presidency.

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