Zimbabwe Police Again Raid Home of Opposition Leader

[seemslikeadream]

Peta Thornycroft
Johannesburg
02 Aug 2004, 19:18 UTC

Morgan Tsvangirai, left, the main opposition leader in Zimbabwe arrives at High Court in Harare
(File photo - Jan. 19, 2004
Zimbabwe police raided the home of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai over the weekend, saying they were looking for weapons. The opposition leader, who has been on trial for treason for more than two years, is a frequent target of Zimbabwe police.
The police said they were looking for weapons at his home in order to ensure peaceful parliamentary elections early next year.

Mr. Tsvangirai has survived numerous attacks and has been raided many times, both at his home and at the Movement for Democratic Change's city center office. He described the weekend raid as "relentless persecution" which would fail to break the spirit of the MDC.

He is charged with high treason, which in Zimbabwe carries a possible death sentence. Judgment in his treason trial was supposed to be delivered last Thursday, but has been delayed indefinitely. Mr. Tsvangirai's defense lawyers say they were informed by the court that two assessors, who presided over the case, stopped the judgment because they needed a copy of the long transcript of the trial. According to senior lawyers in Zimbabwe, the only interpretation of the request for the transcript is that the two assessors discovered that Judge Paddington Garwe was going to deliver a judgment without consulting them. Assessors in Zimbabwe cannot make legal judgments, but they can a make decisions on the facts of the case and vote on the final verdict. Zimbabwe's most senior legal figures said it was unprecedented that a judge would go ahead and deliver a verdict without the votes of the assessors.
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http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=206CA204-290A-4CA8-BE01A0C25D86D363

[PeaceProgProsp]

1. If the verdict hinges on the law and not the facts, the judge

wouldn't need to consult the assessors. Or if it depends on facts that weren't in dispute (facts that were stipulated or not challenged) you obviously wouldn't need to consult the assessors either.