Bennett — a white commercial farmer and treasurer-general in Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) — faces a possible death penalty if convicted of illegal possession of arms for purposes of committing terrorism, banditry and sabotage. Bennett denies the charges and says he is being persecuted by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. Tsvangirai’s nominee for deputy Agriculture Minister, Bennett was arrested on the day some of his MDC colleagues were sworn in as ministers last February.
His arrest and trial have raised tensions within the fragile power-sharing government formed by Mugabe and Tsvangirai last February following Zimbabwe’s disputed elections in 2008.
Yesterday, key state witness Peter Hitschmann, who was this week declared hostile to the state’s case, said Bennett had nothing to do with firearms Hitschmann kept and did not provide funds to buy the arms for an anti-government plot.
When asked by Bennett’s lawyer whether the MDC politician had deposited funds into his account to buy guns or whether he had plotted terrorism, Hitschmann said: “No my Lord, he did not.” The state charges that Bennett funded a plan in 2006 to blow up a major communication link in the country and assassinate key government figures. He is accused of having deposited funds in Hitschmann’s Mozambican account for the operation.
Arms dealer Hitschmann, 49, says he was tortured by state security agents to implicate Bennett. On Monday, the court threw out confessions made by Hitschmann in 2006 because they were not made freely, weakening the state’s case.
Hitschmann, who served jail time for possessing dangerous weapons, said it was not normal that the state had never interviewed him or taken a statement from him before he was called to testify as a witness.
“It’s not only not normal but also dangerous, my Lord. I would have given an indication (to the state) that I would be of little use to the state,” Hitschmann said.
Hitschmann, a former police officer, said as a licensed arms dealer he collected guns from white commercial farmers who were forced off their land for safekeeping or for sale on commission. At the end of Hitschmann’s testimony, defence lawyers applied for the rejection of emails state prosecutors seek to rely on in establishing a link between him and Bennett.
“Hitschmann has made it very clear that such emails were only shown to him and that their origins are unknown to him,” Bennett’s lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, told the court.
