The assault trial of Tendai Biti resumed today with him claiming that Harare magistrate Mrs Vongai Muchuchuti was making biased rulings and decisions, which were breaching his rights.
Biti, who is facing charges of manhandling a Zimbabwean
investor Mrs Tatiana Aleshina at the Harare Magistrates Court, said this while
submitting reasons why he wanted his matter referred to the Constitutional
Court.
The CCC legislator had been making this application for the
past two months and is still continuing.
And for these past two months, Biti has been repeating what
he had been saying in this application.
He is claiming that the court has persistently abused his
constitutional rights.
“Some of the rulings being made by this court are an insult
to my constitutional rights,” he said.
The matter was deferred to September 15 for continuation.
Biti recently told the court that he was surprised why his
matter was moved from the provincial to the regional court.
“I was shocked about three things, my matter was taken from
the provincial court to the regional court under unclear grounds,” he said.
Biti said his matter was taken from Court 3 to the Anti-corruption
Court also under unclear circumstances.
“I was also shocked why my matter was taken away from Court
3 to be handled by a senior magistrate Mr Micheal Reza who is deputy prosecutor
general,” he said.
However, during the previous sitting, Mr Reza also informed
the court that Biti’s application for recusal of the magistrate was not
procedural, and lacked merit.
Mr Reza put it to Biti during cross-examination that he
abandoned his application for referral of the matter to the Constitutional
Court after the court ruled that his matter be heard on a daily basis to ensure
progress.
Mr Reza further informed Biti that if he had any
reservations with the court’s ruling, he should have appealed to the superior
courts rather than applying for the magistrate’s recusal.
However, Biti insisted that he wanted Mrs Muchuchuti to
recuse herself, further alleging that they are protagonists, a position that
was dismissed in today’s ruling.
In her ruling to hear the matter on a daily basis Mrs
Muchuchuti highlighted that Biti’s application for referral of the matter to
the Apex Court started on May 27, and up to date, the application is yet to
conclude.
She said she needed to dispose of this matter within a
reasonable timeframe, hence the adoption of interventions where the matter will
be heard daily with immediate effect.
The magistrate further reiterated that the accused should
be reminded that he is the accused in this matter and should give it priority
over other matters.
“With the rate we are managing this case it means the
accused will need another two months to finish his application,” said Mrs
Muchuchuti. Herald
0 comments:
Post a Comment