Security chiefs angle for amnesty

From The New York Times – April 14, 2009

From left: Paradzai Zimondi,  Perrence Shiri, Constantine Chiwenga and Augustine Chihuri.

HARARE (New York Times) – President Robert Mugabe’s top lieutenants are trying to force the opposition Movement of Democratic Change to grant them amnesty for their past crimes, according to senior members of Mugabe’s party.

Their fixation on getting amnesty was described by four senior ruling party officials, all Mugabe confidants, who spoke to a Zimbabwean journalist working for The New York Times.

To protect themselves, some of Mugabe’s lieutenants are trying to implicate opposition officials in a supposed plot to overthrow the president, hoping to use it as leverage in any amnesty talks, the officials said.

Mugabe’s generals and politicians in Zanu-PF have organised campaigns of terror for decades to keep him and his party in power.

Crimes committed during last year’s election campaign, while the world watched, included abducting, detaining and torturing opposition officials and activists.

Mugabe’s lieutenants, part of an inner circle called the Joint Operations Command, know that their 85-year-old leader may not be around much longer to shield them, and fear losing not just their power and ill-gotten wealth, but their freedom, party officials said. The security chiefs include General Constantine Chiwenga, commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Air Marshall Perrence Shiri, commander of the Air Force, Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri of the police and Paradzai Zimondi commissioner of the Zimbabwe Prison Services.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, one of Mugabe’s principal negotiators in the power-sharing talks that led to the current government, informally told opposition officials around the time that the transitional government took office in February that his party wanted an amnesty, according to a senior Zanu-PF official close to the talks.

“The MDC did not sound very forthcoming,” said the official.