Zimbabwe lawyer takes Mugabe to UN for torture

Zimbabwe lawyer takes Mugabe to UN for torture

SHUMBA

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By Staff Reporter

A TOP Zimbabwean human rights lawyer is suing the Zimbabwean government at the United Nations African Commission on Human and People’s Rights after he was severely tortured by security services while representing an opposition legislator.

Gabriel Shumba brought the action against President Robert Mugabe’s regime claiming he was kidnapped, tortured and made to swear allegiance to Mugabe by Zimbabwe’s security services while representing MDC St Mary’s MP Job Sikhala in January last year.

In papers filed this week, Shumba said he had exhausted all legal remedies inside Zimbabwe.

“Considering the fact (a) that Shumba is no longer in the country where the remedies would be sought and (b) that he fled the country against his will after being tortured and his life threatened, it is the complainant’s submission that remedies cannot be pursued without impediment and hence are not available,” his lawyer David Padilla said in the court papers.

According to the court papers, Shumba was taking instructions from Sikhala for legal representation of the latter in a matter involving alleged political harassment by members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) in January last year.

At about 2300hrs riot police accompanied by plainclothes policemen and agents thought to be from Zimbabwe’s notorious spy agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation, stormed the room where the meeting was taking place.

Shumba alleges that his practising certificate, diary, files and documents as well as his mobile phone were confiscated. He was also slapped several times and kicked with booted feet by amongst others the officer in charge of Saint Mary’s Police Station.

“At around midday he was removed from the cell, a hood placed over his head and thereafter he was driven for about an hour to an unknown location where he was led down what seemed like a tunnel that led to a room underground. The hood was removed and he was stripped naked. With his hands in handcuffs and feet bound in a foetal position a plank was thrust between his legs and arms. Thereafter some of about 15 interrogators began to assault him with booted feet and gave him the option of ‘telling the truth or dying a slow and painful death’.

“During the course of his interrogation, he was electrocuted intermittently for eight hours as a result of which he lost consciousness several times only to be revived to continue to face the electrocution. A chemical substance was applied to his body. He lost control of his bodily functions, vomited blood and was forced to drink the vomit,” the court papers said.

“At 7:00 p.m. he was unbound and forced to write several documents under dictation by the interrogators in which he implicated himself and several senior MDC members in subversive activities. He was forced to agree to work for the Central Intelligence Organisation, to swear allegiance to President Robert Mugabe and to promise that he would not disclose what had happened to him to the independent press or the courts.”

Shumba was only released after his lawyers won a High Court Injunction ordering his release to court where his lawyers would be allowed access to him after several attempts to talk to him had been thwarted.

Central to Shumba’s case is the provisions of the United Nations Charter on Human Rights which guarantees that every human being is entitled to respect for his life and the integrity of his person.

“The electrocuting the complainant and applying of chemical substance into his body is manifestly in direct contravention of the right to personal integrity as guaranteed in Article 4 of the Charter. By subjecting Shumba to conditions of physical and mental harm with such practices as electrocution, beating and denial of food and water, the respondent subjected the applicant to torture or otherwise cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in contravention to the provisions of Article 5 of the Charter,” his lawyers contended.

Shumba asked the Commission to grant that his complaint is admissible before the Commission and that an inquiry be carried out to bring those who perpetrated the violations to justice.

He is also seeking damages for trauma, injury and separation from family.
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