Judge suspended over corruption probe

Judge suspended over corruption probe

JUSTICE PARADZA

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By Staff Reporter
29/02/04
A ZIMBABWEAN judge who was detained overnight last year on a corruption charge has been suspended from the bench to allow an international jury to investigate his case, an official newspaper has reported.

The Zimbabwe Sunday Mail said President Robert Mugabe had set up a three-member tribunal of Supreme Court judges from nearby Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania to investigate the charges against High Court Judge Benjamin Paradza.

Paradza and officials from the ministry of justice were not available for comment on Sunday.

Paradza was detained overnight a year ago over allegations he interfered in the case of a business partner, which was being handled by another judge. Paradza was later freed on bail.

Paradza's lawyers say the charges were designed to punish him for embarrassing Mugabe's government in January 2003 when he freed the mayor of Harare, a member of the main opposition party who had been arrested for holding an illegal political meeting.

The police deny the corruption charges against Paradza were politically motivated.

Zimbabwe's Supreme Court ruled last September that Paradza's detention was unconstitutional and overruled corruption charges against him. The court said the state could still pursue the charges after first subjecting Paradza to a judicial inquiry.

Paradza is suing Mugabe's government for wrongful arrest over a "humiliating" night spent in a lice-infested jail, which he said was an assault on judicial independence.

Half of Zimbabwe's High Court judges condemned Paradza's detention. They said the state failed to follow procedures laid down in the constitution to handle allegations of misconduct against a judge, including the appointment of a tribunal to investigate such cases.

Paradza, a war veteran from Zimbabwe's struggle for independence, stands accused of trying to influence a fellow judge to release the passport of French national Russel Wayne Labuschagne, who was his partner in a safari hunting business venture.

Labuschagne was sentenced to 15 years in prison in April 2003 on charges of murdering a fisherman he had allegedly caught poaching fish in a river in northern Zimbabwe in November 2000.
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