'I was barefoot, with no pants on' - Mukoko tells of moment she was abducted

'I was barefoot, with no pants on' - Mukoko tells of moment she was abducted

TORTURE: Jestina Mukoko

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By Lebo Nkatazo
Posted to the web: 15/01/2009 19:20:12
JESTINA Mukoko broke down in tears in court on Thursday as she narrated her ordeal at the hands of state security agents, including extended periods of torture.

The former TV news anchor turned human rights activist, on trial over an alleged plot to overthrow President Mugabe, told a Harare magistrate how she was seized in a dawn raid with nothing on except a night dress.

Mukoko said seven men and one woman barged into her Norton home on the morning of December 3 and “threatened me with extinction". She was made to fear that she would die, and her captors told her: “A prosecution is highly unlikely.”

“I was barefoot and I did not have my pants on," Mukoko said in a riveting testimony in which she accused state security agents of torture.

Police originally said they had no clue who had abducted Mukoko, and were treating her case as a kidnapping. Amid rising international demands for her immediate release, she was handed over to the police on the night of December 22.

Mukoko’s lawyers say her detention on charges of recruiting bandits to lead an armed insurrection against President Robert Mugabe’s government was unlawful, and want the case referred to the Supreme Court by a magistrate. The Supreme Court will make a ruling on whether her prosecution is constitutional.

After being seized from her sleep, Mukoko said she was bundled into a vehicle, stepping on a firearm that was on the floor.

In the car, Mukoko was made to sit between two men, one of whom ordered her to put her head on her lap. Along the way, she was blind-folded with a blanket as the car stereo belted out loud music.

After a drive of about forty minutes, Mukoko told the court they arrived at a certain destination where she was put into a room with six other kidnapped men and a woman. The torture started that day, with beatings on the soles of her feet by men who took turns to assault her, she told the court.

She was also repeatedly interrogated and at one time she was asked about a trip she had undertaken to Botswana with some staff members of the Zimbabwe Peace Project where she is a director.

She said: “There was a lot of force, I really yelled and they said ‘we do not want noise’. I said how can I not cry when I am in a lot of pain?

“When they came back in the night they were all visibly drunk and they had bottles of liquor and they continued to assault me... I am now getting the after effects. I can hardly sleep at night, my feet really get hot.”

She said every time she left her room, even when going to the toilet, she was blind-folded. Apart from physical abuse, Mukoko said she was also subjected to “mental torture”, like on the second day when she was driven around at night to unknown places by unknown men.

Mukoko said on the third day, she was taken to a conference room which had nine men and one woman for interrogation.

"Some of the men were visibly angry and one of them said to me 'Jestina, you have not started, you will defecate'. If I see that man today, I will recognise him. I didn’t know if I was going to come out alive," Mukoko said.

On December 23, she was told that her captors were taking her to her Norton home to search for weapons, “which came as a surprise because I do not know how an AK or FN looks like."

"The object of the Zimbabwe Peace Project is not and I repeat is not to topple the government," she said, adding that hers was a non- partisan organisation that was involved in among other things, documenting human rights violations.

She said sometime before she was abducted, a police officer approached her and asked for money to go outside the country from the organisation, but she had declined. "I was surprised to hear that I was recruiting insurgents," she said.

Mukoko pleaded with the presiding magistrate to see to it that the state does not continue to violate a court directive and recommendations by her doctor as well as the prison doctor, a Dr Makanza, that she undergoes treatment.

She added that she doubted that Attorney General Johannes Tomana, who on Tuesday told the state-owned Herald that he was a proud Zanu PF supporter, would prosecute the matter in an impartial manner.

Arguments are continuing in the case before a magistrate makes a ruling.
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