Firearms dealer Peter Hitschmann was accused of plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe after a large cache of arms was seized from in 2006. After prosecutors failed to prove that charge, he was eventually sent to jail for firearms posession. He talks to SW Radio Africa's Violet Gonda:

Violet Gonda: My guest on the programme Hot Seat is Michael Peter Hitschmann who was released from jail on Thursday. The former police constable was initially arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Robert Mugabe at his birthday celebration in Manicaland in 2006 and served a total of 40 months for possessing dangerous firearms without a licence. I spoke with the firearms dealer on the day he was released and first asked him how he was feeling.Then the trial kicked off, the State knew from the onset they had no basis for the trial so they played dirty tricks from the beginning by first of all delaying the trial. So I ended up waiting another, I think it was about eight or nine months before we completed the trial in July 2007. The original charge which was the intention to commit acts of terrorism, banditry etc totally flopped and I was acquitted on that one and I was convicted under the Public Order and Security Act of possession, possession of dangerous weapons.

Michael Hitschmann: I’m fine. Very happy to be out as you can imagine.

Hitschmann: Yes, I was arrested on 6^th March 2006 following a tip off that was given to the intelligence agencies by an army major called Major Phiri, Major Israel Phiri. Major Israel Phiri alleged that I was the commander, or one of the deputy commanders of the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement, a military organisation operating from within the armed forces of Zimbabwe and aiming to topple Mugabe.

Hitschmann: I’m not aware that the Movement exists, those were the allegations that were brought against me and in the trial they failed to prove that (a) the Movement exists, (b) that I was a part of that Movement or (c) that I had ever planned or plotted anything to do with either the demise of the President or any other member of his party.

Hitschmann: No, what happened is I spent 16 months in remand, a year and four months. I was denied bail I think at least five or six times with a claim that I was a danger to national security - based on the original charge which was the second most serious charge that can be brought to anyone in this country. The first is treason as the one that was brought against Morgan Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti. At the time, when these charges were brought, the only sentence that was available was a life sentence in prison. By the time we reached July 2006, there had been an amendment to that law which allowed for any lesser sentence for a life sentence. In any case I spent 16 months in remand before the trial even kicked off.

At the time, you’ll probably remember, I was a registered firearms dealer and from the beginning I always admitted having in my possession certain arms of war for which I should have had special authority from the Minister, and that’s what they convicted me on. But that charge had the option of a fine, I think it was 22 million dollars at the time. I was never given that option and instead I was given a four year sentence, one year was suspended either by the courts and then I went to prison for a three year spell. On good behaviour they removed one year so I actually served two years jail. So totally I’ve been 40 months in prison between the conviction and the remand.

Hitschmann: If you can believe the system of justice in this country, you’ll now be aware that my appeal has never been heard. The last time we went the legal route was in December 2008 when my lawyers applied for bail pending appeal because the previous application for bail pending appeal had been denied by Justice Chitakunye citing there would be time, ample time for my appeal to be heard. That was in September 2007. December 2008, the appeal still hadn’t been heard and we went back to the judge and said ‘listen our client is left with a little more than 6 months to serve and the appeal hasn’t been heard, we’re requesting bail pending appeal.’ His answer was there was yet time for the appeal to be heard. Today is the 2^nd of July, two years after the conviction and my appeal still hasn’t been heard.

Hitschmann: First of all, as a registered firearms dealer, most of the firearms that were recovered here at my premises were in gun safes, there was never any question of an arms cache. If you look at the word cache – it comes from the word cachet in French which is hidden. An arms cache implies something that is hidden, either hidden underground or hidden in some other manner. The weaponry that was taken from my house was not hidden. All the registered firearms which had licences and for which I had answered to the police on the three monthly basis as per the normal routine for a firearms dealer, those firearms I told them they were all in order and shouldn’t have left these premises in the first place since they were here legally. That covers the pistols, the shotguns, hunting rifles and a variety of other rifles.

The ones that were not covered were six firearms and they were one FN not four as they said, there was one AK, there were some Uzi sub-machine guns and another H&K sub-machine gun. And over the years that I’ve been operating as a firearms dealer, since these farm invasions started, I ended up being a conduit to the police including for arms of war. Because what was happening is as these farmers were leaving their farms under pressure, some of them were discovering firearms that were not even theirs, they may have been from relatives who were deceased, who were alive during the so-called Rhodesian war and they ended up finding firearms hidden under clothes or whatever and didn’t know what to do with them.

The police know that I have been a conduit for those firearms, in fact doing the duty of the State in handing those firearms back to the police. But when they came to my house and conducted the search, they refused for my lawyers to be present and removed all our papers from here and in that process they conveniently made some of the issue vouchers that pertains to handing in of weapons to the police armoury, they made them disappear.

So by the time we were ready to submit our defence, we were left with only two issue vouchers, one for 40 weapons from July 2005 and I think another for four weapons, but they made sure that all the issue vouchers for arms of war that I had handed in, they had made disappear because they knew that would strengthen my case even more - because while it’s correct that you have to have a special permit above and beyond that of a firearms dealer in order to handle arms of war, nevertheless I was doing a duty that the State was failing to do because the Central Firearms Registry is in chaos. So as a result I was actually doing a job that they were supposed to do.

Hitschmann: Yes, you see I can give you a scenario. Let’s say you are the daughter of a guy who was alive during that particular war and he’s late now and you happen to be on that commercial farm with your husband and the kids etc. You are told to vacate the farm within 24 hours. You end up sticking all the belongings that you can find in the house, including the trunk, trunks or other property from your late father which you never tampered with because you didn’t want to deal with that issue out of grief or whatever. You throw it onto the truck, you rush into town to escape, including not only from the farm invaders but even from the police who are forcing you to get off your premises.

Once you’re in town, you now have to downsize as you have too much stuff so you start selecting what you want to get rid of and what you don’t want to get rid of. Lo and behold, you open the trunk which you thought had clothes in it, and at the bottom of it there’s an AK47 with four magazines. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to go to the police station? Not likely because you know what the police are like because you’ve dealt with them on the farm invasion.

So the next thing that happens, is through the grapevine since I was the only dealer around here and as an ex-police officer as the commander of border patrol, I had a good connection with police officers here, so what would happen is these people would give me the firearms and I would bring them to the armoury myself. No questions asked, they would be handed in and secured. That way the weapons would be correctly disposed of so I acted as a conduit for these firearms to get to where they were supposed to go.

Hitschmann: No. What happened is the people were forced to leave the farms in a very short period of time. If you recall, some of them were only given a matter of hours to leave the farm or days or whatever but whatever the period of time that was given it was not a period of time that was conducive to doing a careful check of everything that was being moved. So the farmers generally would just pile everything onto a seven ton truck and just ship it into town, the nearest town being here in Mutare. Then once they were in town, as I said, they usually had to downsize because a farmhouse would be big compared to these town houses.

So in that process, especially the younger people they would have trunks and other belongings from people from way back that they hadn’t actually touched, they just forgot them and in going through those belongings, wanting to dispose of them or whatever, on more than one occasion, firearms were discovered that they didn’t even know existed and assumed that uncle so-and-so had had them during the Rhodesian war but uncle or grandpa or whoever was long dead.

The firearms did not come with me from the farms, they came with the actual people who were abandoning the farm, they come into town, they discover that they have got arms of war and they don’t know what to do with them. I was the registered firearms dealer here and people know me because it is a small community, also because I was in law enforcement so they come to me and say right, we’ve got this, what do we do with it? So the conduit was, that I would take those firearms, hold them and in due course, I would move them to the police provincial armoury at Main Camp here in Mutare.

Upon arrival at the armoury, I knew all the officers because we’d served together, I’d been 15 years in the Force so everyone knew me so I would say these are firearms that have come from this particular area whatever, they didn’t care about where they had come from, all they wanted to know is that they were safe. In other words, they were unlicensed firearms, firearms of war that needed to be safe, they needed to be in their armoury and subsequently moved to national armoury in Harare.

When I handed those firearms over I would get a police issue voucher which is like a receipt which would give you the serial number or any relevant information. Those issue vouchers were among papers, a lot of papers that were removed from my office here and when my lawyers went to prepare the defence looking for the relevant papers to prove the existence of a conduit where arms of war had passed through me to the police, those papers were conveniently missing. The hard copies will still be on the issue voucher books of the police but chances of getting those I think are pretty slim especially with these guys, the way they handled the case.

Hitschmann: Well, at the moment, most of the farms have been invaded so I shudder to think in the rest of the country what happened to firearms that may have been left behind. Because the thing is, it’s not unusual in countries, especially third world countries where there has been a form of struggle or civil war and it’s quite common to have problems with these types of weapons hanging around.

If you look at Mozambique for example, today it’s a disaster because on top of it they had absolutely no order or law and order or control of firearms during the Machel regime. So I mean weapons are all over the place, no-one has a clue where they are, who had them and who’s responsible for them.

Hitschmann: No, I was not a soldier in the war.

Hitschmann: Yes. Yes there was. There were various provisions. For the guerrillas there were the assembly points and for the Rhodesian forces and civilians and whatever, there were other systems that were put in place but you have to remember that in the context of these struggles what often happened is both parties don’t hand in everything.

Hitschmann: Well if you look at the pattern of violence, particularly last year before the June re-run there were many reports from around the country of armed gangs moving around, I think you remember that. Right, so we don’t know who armed those people. Were they armed from official armouries or were they using firearms that perhaps might have come from somewhere else? We don’t know. The key issue when it comes to any type of firearms, specifically firearms and never mind whether they be arms of war or otherwise, is there has to be strict control.

And unfortunately, as a reflection of the breakdown in other systems in this country, Central Firearms Registry for some time now has not been functioning correctly. So the Central Firearms Registry was the controlling body that had a system of records on every legal owner of a firearm in the country and that system is not working properly. It hasn’t been working properly for some time now, although that does not necessarily cover arms that are not legally held that was at least the first step in control.

As far as weapons that may have been stashed either by guerrillas or kept by people whether they be farmers or whatever because if you remember during the post-80s there were some problems along some of the border areas particularly in the east of the country and also in Matabeleland where the new government had actually allowed farmers to be armed for their own protection.

So the issue of firearms or arms of war as we call them, is not something that only emanates from the liberation struggle, it goes even post-independence. It was only in around about 2004, 2005 in compliance with SADC legislature that Zimbabwe decided to withdraw certain types of firearms that had been sold to the members of the public, which included arms of war. But the way that that recall was done was again not very well organised. There were adverts in the press but the follow-up now to actually get those firearms into where they were supposed to go was poor.

You see there’s a standard problem in Zim which we’ve been living with for some time and it’s just got worse, where there’s a problem of resources, there’s a problem of poor management and there’s a problem of corruption. You mix the three together and whether we‘re talking about firearms or any other area where control is needed, those controls are not being put in place or they’re not being monitored correctly.

Hitschmann: What you need to understand is when I was arrested and others were arrested with me, what the State seemed to be trying to do, the State intelligence agents seemed to be trying to do, was to construct a conspiracy. It’s important to remember that because these people tried to build something which was not there because their agenda was to neutralise as many people as possible from the opposition.

So first of all, when they publicised the so-called arms cache, I understand that it was run on ZTV, they claimed that the arms cache was found in the back of two pickup vehicles near the Holiday Inn in Mutare. Now that’s very strange because they filmed, the intelligence agents filmed the operation here at my house and yet ZBC filmed another so-called operation where I didn’t even appear on this film of vehicles where they claimed the firearms had been recovered.

And when we were tortured at Adams Barracks, because we were taken to a military barracks for torture during the night of 2006, we were told that we had to confess and all of us having to confess to about five or six different scenarios which were dictated to me. So the connection between myself and Giles Mutsekwa and myself and Roy Bennett and whatever exists in the imagination of these people, that’s where it exists.

Hitschmann: Well the events of the night of 6^th of March 2006 are not very pleasant and I try not to dwell on them too much, but in the broad sense the confessions that they were looking for is (1) that I personally was planning to assassinate the President on the 2^nd of February 2006 which is allegedly why they changed the venue of his birthday celebrations at the last minute from the Showgrounds to Sabkubva Stadium.

The second supposed confession was that I was intending to assassinate key Zanu-PF officials here (Mutare) and in Matabeleland, white farmers who allegedly supported Zanu-PF, some other white people whose names I didn’t even recognise.

he third alleged conspiracy was in some bomb attacks which had taken place in Mutare some time prior to this incident. The fourth one, because (Esau) Mupfumi and (Enoch) Porusingazi at the time were out of favour with the party…

Hitschmann: Yes, the Zanu-PF officials Mupfumi and Porusingazi were out of favour at the time. They were both in the police cells at the same time when I was arrested, but they were arrested under charges of misappropriation and some other issues, I think you might have remembered that case. So the fifth or sixth confession that I was forced to write involved me conspiring with them to somehow unseat Mugabe and others from the older members of the Zanu-PF. So there were a variety of conspiracies which they wanted us to confess to.

Hitschmann: Well personally I was kicked in the testicles a few times and then they resorted to using cigarettes on my buttocks but although that was obviously a terrible experience I was lucky enough to pass out quite early when they started with the cigarette burns. But more effective was the fact they had arrested my wife and my son and were detaining them at the police because in the morning

I cooperated with the confessions because as a seasoned police officer I knew that the confessions were totally worthless. What worried me more was the following morning when they wanted me to sign a Warned & Cautioned Statement at a police station out of town and at that point I wanted a lawyer to be present, that’s when I was threatened again and added to that threat was they said that my wife and my son could join me at Adams Barracks.

So I had no choice but to sign the Warned & Cautioned Statement. But the Warned & Cautioned Statement and the confessions were not presented in court because the court accepted as absolute truth the fact that I had been tortured. Where torture is part of the procedure of the so-called investigations, none of the papers whether they be confessions or Warned & Cautioned Statements can be presented as evidence in court. So at the end of the day it was a pointless exercise for the investigators, so-called investigators.

Hitschmann: They’ve never interviewed me or discussed that with me, I’ve only heard that through the lawyer that apparently the State claimed in front of the magistrate that I am the State’s witness. So I’m fascinated to hear from them how they would see me being the State witness.

Hitschmann: I have nothing to testify about. I think the State will have to clarify what it is exactly how they see the connection between my being a witness and Roy Bennett. The thing doesn’t make any sense because they’re charging him with exactly the same charge that they charged me with for which I’ve been acquitted. Roy was nowhere near my premises, he hasn’t been to my premises, he doesn’t have anything at all to do with my business, he was not found in any possession of firearms on the 6^th of March 2006 so I fail to see any connection that can be inferred between myself and him in that particular incident.

Hitschmann: Well it’s pretty obvious. I think they’re terrified that Roy Bennett will get into his post as the deputy minister of agriculture but obviously the main thing on their mind is to avoid at all costs that he gets into that post.

Hitschmann: Well first of all, the team that came down to deal with this issue was from, as far as I’m aware, they were from the Special Forces, military intelligence and central intelligence organisation and they were all from out of Mutare because according to what they testified in court, they claimed that they couldn’t trust Mutare-based people because they may be loyal or otherwise linked to me. So this was a team that was totally out of this area.

I don’t know any of those people that were involved in the actual torture. I don’t hold any grudges against my colleagues or others from the uniformed forces because first of all the number of people who tortured me was probably around four or five and that’s hardly a representation of our uniformed forces. Basically you’re talking about a minority that act outside the law. So I don’t hold grudges against my colleagues and others who are within the uniformed forces.

Hitschmann: That’s correct. Prison conditions in the last few months have improved but that doesn’t mean to say that they are up to humane standards but compared to the conditions that we had before which were basically death camp situation, there’s been a marked improvement.

Hitschmann: If I sue somebody, I’m suing the State. If I sue the State it means that Zimbabweans end up paying for my suffering. I don’t think that that’s actually relevant. My suffering is something that has happened, it’s taken place, it’s now over, it’s now behind me. I’m not interested in suing a bankrupt State and then end up with every day Zimbabweans have to pay for my damages or whatever out of their taxes. We’ve got better things to do with our money because the country’s broke. So no, I’m not suing.

Hitschmann: I don’t know. At the moment I’m unemployed, thanks to this State conviction I can’t work because I used to work in security related field. So with this conviction it’s impossible for me to do so again because all security work falls under the authority of Home Affairs. So I think for the moment I’m happy to be with my family, with my friends, we’re going to relax together, try and catch up on lost time and then I’ll plan my future from there, but I’m here in Zimbabwe, I’m not going anywhere.

Feedback can be sent to violet@swradioafrica.com