The Defendants of Beatrice Mtetwa:
Jestina Mukoko is director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project who was abducted and tortured by the Mugabe regime. For the first three weeks of her 89-day detention, her whereabouts were unknown and many feared she had been killed.
Gift Phiri is a Zimbabwean journalist who was reporting for the UK-based newspaper, The Zimbabwean, when he was abducted
and arrested by state police for “publishing false news.” For five days, Phiri was beaten and jailed in the Harare Central Police Station.
Gift Phiri was acquitted of all charges and is currently chief writer for the Harare-based Daily News.
Roy Bennett is a 3rd generation farmer who was elected a member of Parliament representing the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. Bennett’s political opposition led the Mugabe regime to illegally seize his coffee farm.
Charges against Bennett have ranged from trying to kill Mugabe to pushing a cabinet minister. Arrested and imprisoned multiple times, he eventually left the country to protect his family.
Elias Mudzuri is the first member of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, to be elected mayor of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city. Within a year of his election, he was arrested and beaten by Mugabe’s police.
Four months later, the Mugabe government locked him out of the mayor’s office.