By Court Reporter
MDC Alliance top official Morgen Komichi was arrested Thursday over yet another election related offence.
This time, the former transport deputy minister was arrested for allegedly storming the conference centre early this month during results announcement of the July 30 presidential elections.
According to a warned and cautioned statement he signed Friday morning, the MDC-T official is being charged for violation provisions of the Electoral Act, Chapter 2:13.
The state alleges that on August 2 this year, at 23:45 hrs and at Harare International Conference Centre (HICC), Komichi stormed the room which was packed with local and international journalists among other accredited individuals and tried to discredit the results that were being announced.
According to the state, Komichi said, at the time, “I did not sign those results. So, the results are fake; the results have just been printed and they have not been verified. The polling agents and we are the polling agents and we have not done that…”
Lawyers representing the embattled MDC-T deputy national chair say they are not happy with how the case was being handled by the police.
Komichi was still being detained in police cells even when the paperwork required for him to be taken to court had been finalised early Friday morning.
Police locked him at Harare Central police station after they were denied authority to interview him in privacy by human rights lawyers hired to defend him.
“Some dubious police came requesting to interview him in privacy but we did not allow it because it is against the law…,” said Obey Shava, one of the lawyers.
It is however not the first time Komichi has been arrested over an election related offence.
He was in 2013 arrested and later convicted after having been found in possession of a special vote ballot paper which he claimed to have picked from a bit at the Harare International Conference Centre where the special vote was being processed.
The MDC-T top official had been trying to show all and sundry the country’s poll processes were very porous and open to manipulation.
