Posted on 07/21/2002 9:36:04 AM PDT by Clive
HARARE - A Zimbabwean journalist with a private daily is due to appear in court tomorrow to face trial under the country's tough new media law, his lawyer Lawrence Chibwe said.
Lloyd Mudiwa of Zimbabwe's sole independent daily, The Daily News, becomes the second journalist to be tried under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), after US journalist Andrew Meldrum, who was acquitted last Monday.
Mudiwa is to appear before a magistrate court facing charges of publishing falsehoods and abusing journalistic privileges, similar charges to those that Meldrum faced.
The charges against Mudiwa arise from a story, which has since proved false, that the Daily News broke in April alleging that a woman had been beheaded in front of her children by Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party militia.
The paper later retracted the story and offered an apology to President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), after it was found that the chief source of the story, a man claiming to be the dead woman's husband, fabricated the incident.
Mudiwa's hearing was supposed to have opened June 20, but the state prosecutor Thabani Mpofu sought a postponement to allow him to try Mudiwa along with his editor-in-chief Geoff Nyarota.
But Chibwe said Nyarota had by Friday not yet received a summons to appear in court with Mudiwa tomorrow. Mudiwa was arrested on April 30 along with another journalist from the Daily News, but the court later tossed out charges against his colleague. They were released from police custody two days later pending the trial to open tomorrow.
The press law under which the journalists are being charged was enacted just days after President Mugabe's controversial re-election in March.
Journalists found guilty under the law face up to two years in prison or a ZIM $100,000 ($1,818) fine.
Since the law took effect on March 15, 12 journalists have been arrested - some of them more than once.
Isn't that what "journalists" are supposed to do? Bump.
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