JOHANNESBURG — A Zimbabwe court acquitted opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday of plotting to murder President Robert Mugabe, prompting an angry retort from Mr. Mugabe’s government and vows to appeal the surprise verdict.
“The state has not been able to prove high treason beyond reasonable doubt,” said Judge Paddington Garwe of the High Court in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
The judge’s not-guilty verdict brought thunderous applause from onlookers in the packed courtroom
The 52-year-old former trade unionist said at a press conference later that he hoped that his acquittal could provide a basis for “national reconciliation.”
This referred to a revival of talks between his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mr. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, which has ruled for 24 years.
Mr. Mugabe’s government said the verdict was wrong and promised to take further legal action.
“After perusing the judgment, the government of Zimbabwe is of the strong view that the accused, Morgan Tsvangirai, has been wrongly acquitted,” Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said.
The minister said the government “accepts and respects the verdict but reserves the right to exercise other options available to it in terms of the law.”
The charges, for which Mr. Tsvangirai could have received the death sentence, stemmed from a February 2002 broadcast on Australian television of a grainy video purportedly showing Mr. Tsvangirai discussing the “elimination” of Mr. Mugabe with Israeli businessman Ari Ben-Menashe.
In court, Mr. Ben-Menashe admitted that he had received a payment of $615,000 from the Zimbabwe government for a public relations contract but denied that the payment was linked to the case.
Mr. Tsvangirai conceded that he had met Mr. Ben-Menashe in Montreal at the end of 2001 but that discussions had focused on raising funds in the United States and Canada for use during the 2002 presidential election.
Mr. Ben-Menashe had secretly filmed one of the meetings but Judge Garwe rejected the tapes as grainy and inaudible.
The United States yesterday welcomed the acquittal.
“We would hope that this signals the end of the politically motivated prosecutions and that it would open the door to constructive dialogue between Zimbabwe’s political parties,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
Mr. Mugabe narrowly won the 2002 ballot. But most Western countries, including the United States, refused to recognize the result, citing widespread fraud and intimidation.
After the judgment, Mr. Tsvangirai accused the government of staging “a huge political trial.”
“Freedom and democracy were on trial,” he said. “For almost two years, I have been forced to live in conditions of the same kind as house arrest.”
Ahead of the verdict, opposition supporters, diplomats and journalists had gathered near the court, but were dispersed by riot police.
Since its formation in 1999, Mr. Tsvangirai’s MDC has posed a threat to the single-party dominance of ZANU-PF.
Over the past five years, the state has passed draconian laws shutting down most private newspapers, banning public meetings and making it a crime to criticize Mr. Mugabe or his government.
A land-reform program has seen most of the country’s 4,000 white commercial farmers driven from their land, which was given to landless blacks and to Mr. Mugabe’s political allies.
In South Africa at the time the verdict was announced, about 150 Zimbabweans staged a demonstration in the capital, Pretoria, calling on regional leaders to ensure that a general election set for early next year is free and fair.
When news of the acquittal was announced, the crowd broke into song and showed the MDC’s open-palm salute.
At the protest, MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said the people of Zimbabwe had always believed in Mr. Tsvangirai’s innocence.
“This case should never have gone to court in the first place,” he said. “It was a deliberate attempt to malign the MDC and its leadership.”
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