Zimbabwe: Police Stopped From Seizing Lawyer’s Phone

SW Radio Africa (London)

Tererai Karimakwenda

14 July 2011

The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) have welcomed a ruling by the High Court, barring police from seizing a mobile phone from one of their lawyers.

Lawyer David Hofisi had gone to Harare Central to rescue another lawyer, Tawanda Tandi, who had been arrested because the state alleged he had obstructed justice by going to the police station to attend to the Finance Ministry employees arrested last Friday.

The police claim Tandi refused an order to surrender a passport belonging to Angeline Chishawa, one of the arrested employees and the woman the state media claimed was having an affair with Finance Minister Tendai Biti.

A Chief Superintendent Majuta then demanded Hofisi’s phone, saying he needed to “download” information. When Hofisi refused police threatened to arrest him.

Having managed to get away from the police station Hofisi filed papers at the High Court arguing that his mobile phone had personal and professional information which police should not access without legal justification. He described the police demand as “wrongful and unlawful.”

Justice Bere ruled that police must “act in terms of the due process law” before seizing the phone or any article connected to the lawyer’s “duties as a legal practitioner.” The police now have 10 days to challenge the ruling in court.

The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights welcomed the decision as a victory for lawyers in private practice in the country. “The ruling reaffirms client-lawyer privilege and puts the brakes on the police’s increasingly arbitrary and unlawful actions, which prevent lawyers from exercising their professional obligations,” spokesperson Kumbirai Mafunda told SW Radio Africa on Thursday.

Mafunda explained that it had become more difficult for the lawyers to do their work because police are devising new tactics to harass them and their clients. “People rely on us to defend them and it seems there is a new warfare aimed at lawyers in Zimbabwe,” Mafunda added.

Meanwhile, judgement was reserved on Wednesday in a similar case involving Finance Minister Tenadi Biti, who is fighting police attempts to access records of his mobile phone history. The police claim Biti unlawfully authorized foreign trips for employee Angeline Chishawa and are demanding his phone records as part of the investigation. But the allegations are widely believed to be part of a smear campaign against the Minister and the MDC-T.

The MDC-T accuse the police of fraudulently acquiring a warrant from a magistrate, ordering Econet Wireless to release Biti’s records. But the Minister appealed the decision at the High Court, saying it is harassment and invasion of privacy. Econet have said they are awaiting a ruling before deciding what to do.

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