Lawyer says Zimbabwe should drop case of UK journalists

A defence lawyer for two British journalists charged in Zimbabwe with illegally covering last month's elections told the court yesterday the case should be dropped for lack of evidence.

The judge in the case reinstated bail for the pair, who have been in jail for almost two weeks. They were expected to spend the night at a British diplomat's residence.

The Sunday Telegraph's chief foreign correspondent Toby Harnden and photographer Julian Simmonds, who could face two years in jail and a fine if convicted, were arrested in Norton near Zimbabwe's capital Harare on March 31, the day of the parliamentary elections.

Defence lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said the government had failed to produce "sufficiently credible evidence that would make this court put the accused on their defence".

"They must of necessity be acquitted at this stage."

Magistrate Never Diza was due to make a ruling.

The pair, who are also charged with outstaying their visas, deny they were gathering information without the temporary permit required under tough media laws that critics say are aimed at muzzling dissent against President Robert Mugabe.

The men say they were on a tourist trip to Zimbabwe which took them to the northern resort town of Victoria Falls, Matobo National Park and the southern city of Bulawayo, and that they believed they had been granted two weeks' stay in the country, rather than the seven days immigration officers said they had.

"The state did not seek to investigate whether ... they did anything other than tourism. In my respectful submission there is no evidence whatsoever showing that they were practising as journalists," Mtetwa said.

On Monday the investigating officer in the case said he could not decipher most of the material in a notebook confiscated from the men and that a camera they had contained no images. On Wednesday Mtetwa took state lawyers to task for failing to produce the camera as evidence in court.

Prosecutor Albert Masamha opposed the defence application saying state witnesses had given sufficient evidence to convict the men and that the accused should take the stand to give their version of events.

Magistrate Diza, who granted the journalists bail last week before prosecutors blocked the move, ordered that bail be reinstated after the state failed to defend its opposition to it within the stipulated seven days.

Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF won the election amid charges of fraud from the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which also disputed the party's victory in 2000 and 2002 polls.

Zimbabwe has arrested, deported or denied entry to dozens of journalists under media laws forbidding foreigners from working permanently as journalists in Zimbabwe.

- REUTERS