Zimbabwe
Mugabe sued in New York

afrol.com, 10 September - The widow of a rival party leader beaten and burned to death with gasoline in April, and four other victims of the recent political strife in the African nation of Zimbabwe, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against President Robert Mugabe, accusing him of "orchestrating and directing” a campaign of terror as head of his political party.

Mugabe, in New York for the United Nations Millennium Summit, was served with the lawsuit at the Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem Thursday night, where he spoke to a supportive crowd of more than 4,000. Two senior aides are also named in the lawsuit, which seeks millions in monetary damages.

Earlier on Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department, at the behest of the State Department, tried to block the plaintiffs from serving the legal papers on Mugabe, arguing that he has immunity from service and it would have violated treaties to have Secret Service agents serve him. Under court rules, service of the papers must be made in person.

U.S District Court Judge George Daniels initially ordered the U.S. Secret Service to serve Mugabe, but after hours of argument Thursday, he reversed his position, forcing the plaintiffs to hire a private process server, lawyers said.

Neither Daniels nor the State Department returned phone calls. Through a spokesman, the Justice Department declined to comment.

Emmanuel Gumbo, a spokesman for the Zimbabwe Mission to the UN, said he was not aware of the lawsuit and could not comment.

Based on the Alien Tort Claims Act, the lawsuit takes the same legal strategy as the case against Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader accused of war crimes that resulted Aug. 10 in a $745-million verdict. A similar lawsuit was filed Sept. 1 against former Chinese Premier Li Peng, accusing him of human rights violations in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

The lawsuit is another hurdle for the 76-year-old African leader, who has been in office for 20 years. Since January, he has lost a referendum that would have extended his term of office, and has been accused of looting his nation's treasury to buy luxury hideaways and of backing bloody takeovers of nearly 1,000 white-owned farms by black war veterans.

The U.S. Senate is weighing the passage of the Zimbabwe Democracy Act, which accuses the government and Mugabe's ZANU-PF party of "deliberate and systematic violence, intimidation and killings.” The bill proposes cutting off aid to the Central African nation, which has a population of 11.1 million.

Four of the five plaintiffs in the lawsuit were active in MDC, an opposition party formed in January of this year, which was mounting a challenge to ZANU-PF's dominance of the government, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit claims Mugabe made inflammatory statements against MDC, stating it was an enemy of his party and its supporters would be dealt with accordingly.

Adella Chiminya Tachiona, 34, is the widow of Tapfuma Chiminya Tachiona, MDC's youth organizer, who was killed April 15 while campaigning. Tachiona was beaten unconscious with metal bars, boots and fists by ZANU-PF supporters, doused with gasoline and set on fire, the lawsuit alleges.

Elliott and Efridah Pfebve's brother Metthew, an MDC candidate, was injured in several attacks before he was dragged from his house during an attack by about 300 ZANU-PF supporters, beaten and found mutilated and naked on a road April 29, according to the complaint. Pfebve, the suit alleges, was tortured at a primary school turned "torture camp,” which was run by a former soldier who is a member of Mugabe's party.

Evelyn Masaiti, another plaintiff and MDC candidate, alleges she was punched, burned by a gasoline bomb and forced from her house, which was torched, all by ZANU-PF supporters. The fifth plaintiff, Maria Del Carmen Stevens, is the widow of farmer David Yendall Stevens, who was kidnaped April 15 by ZANU-PF supporters and war veterans, beaten, forced to drink diesel oil and shot to death, according to the complaint.

In the Harlem speech, Mugabe vigorously defended himself, asserting that Britain under Tony Blair reneged on agreements that it would buy out white landowners. He said his nation's last white head of state, Ian Smith, is still alive. "If I was a vengeful leader, would he be walking the earth?” he said.

His statements found largely sympathetic ears in the politically diverse crowd, which included Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and City Council members Bill Perkins and Archie Spigner.

"It clarified for me the distortion of what was going on,” Perkins said, referring to the land reform issue. "One got the impression from the mainstream media that he was perpetrating genocidal, or anti-white
slaughter, when frankly it was quite the opposite. It's not about hate. This is about deeds that were done to people long ago that are being addressed.”

Source: Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)

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