Rushwaya’s High Court bail hearing commences

By Daniel Kachere

Suspended Zimbabwe Miners federation boss Henrietta Rushwaya’s application for bail commenced at the Harare High Court Wednesday, with her lawyer stating that the Magistrates Court grossly misdirected itself when it denied her bail.
Rushwaya was arrested end of October at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport where she was found in possession of 6.6 kilogrammes of 99.99 percent pure gold, allegedly trying to smuggle it to Dubai.
It is alleged that she was acting in connivance with Ali Mohammed, Stephen Tserayi, Rafios Mufandauya as well as ZMF employee Gift Karanda.
She was remanded in custody following a lengthy bail hearing at the Harare Magistrates Court.
Representing Rushwaya, lawyer Tapson Dzvetero told presiding judge Benjamin Chikowero that his client argues that there were a number of irregularities and misdirections where the court acted on wrong principles of the law to refuse her bail.
Dzvetero said the procedure adopted by the Magistrates court was wrong as there were no compelling reasons placed before the court to deny her bail and that some of the charges she was facing were defective.
“The Magistrates court had an irregularity of disregarding that in respect to the charge of possession, the charge was defective. Where there is a defective charge before the court, the court ought not to have placed Rushwaya on remand as the State’s case was weak. When a charge is defective it would fail at trial.

“The court misdirected itself that there was a strong case on the charge of possession. It is trite that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Court did not consider this aspect at all during the proceedings. The failure to accept this principle was a gross misdirection by the court,” submitted Dzvetero
He further submitted that there was no evidence placed before the court at all on the charge of bribery where it is alleged Rushwaya tried to bribe Owen Sibanda, Dzikamai Paradza and airport security to facilitate her release.
Dzvetero also told the court that the court wrongly relied on the testimony of the investigating officer who was not aware of critical aspects to the case.
“The court disregarded an important factor that the investigating officer was not aware of aspects surrounding his investigations, probably feigning not to know of such factors that were in favour of Rushwaya. The investigating officer’s action of coming to court without the knowledge of the existence of a full docket before the court was questionable. The court should have not relied on him.” Nhau/Indaba