HARARE – Zimbabwe High Court judges on Friday declined to hear the case of kidnapped human rights activist Jestina Mukoko because it was “too hot” to handle, a lawyer for the activist said.

The lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, who wants the court to order the police to release Mukoko or if they are not the ones holding her to investigate her abduction, said the case file was tossed from one judge to another who all upon reading its contents declined to hear the matter. 

The matter, which is before the court on an urgent basis, was eventually referred back to Judge President Rita Makarau who directed it be heard before Justice Anne-Marie Gorowa, according to Mtetwa.

Apparently Gorowa was the judge who had been initially allocated the case.

Mutetwa said: “The file was given to a judge yesterday. I went to the High Court this morning and that judge to whom the case had been allocated had still not come in by 1000hrs so the file had to be re-allocated.

“It was then taken to another judge who after going through the file said that he could not hear the matter. It was then taken to another judge at about 1100hrs who then requested time to read the file. We were then told to check with the judge president. So until about lunchtime nobody had any news as to what was happening.”

The lawyer said she spend the rest of Friday being send from one office to another until at 1615hrs when she was told the case file had been send back to Makaru’s office who had ordered that the matter proceed on Monday before Gorowa.

Mtetwa, who did not disclose the names of judges who declined to handle Mukoko’s case, said she was astonished the matter was being moved to Monday saying because it was an urgent case it should have been heard on Friday night or over the weekend.

She said: “I am completely dumbfounded. Why cant the matter be heard tonight, Saturday or on Sunday because this is an urgent matter. This is frustrating. This is one case that demonstrates that the rule of law has really broken down in this country.”

Mukoko, a former staffer at the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and now head of human rights organization Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), was abducted in the early morning hours on Wednesday from her home in Norton town, 50km west of Harare.

She has not been seen or heard from since then and Mtetwa said she and her team had “searched everywhere but we haven’t found her.”

Mukoko’s ZPP has played a crucial role in monitoring and documenting politically motivated violence in Zimbabwe, building an archive of crimes that could be crucial in prosecuting perpetrators of human rights abuses in the future.

Political analysts and human rights groups say Mugabe’s government has increasingly resorted to repression and terror tactics to keep public discontent in check in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis, marked by the world’s highest inflation of 231 million percent, and shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel.

Mugabe’s government routinely targets supporters of the opposition MDC party for abuse but has in recent months stepped up repression against human rights defenders and other representatives of civil society in Zimbabwe to try to intimidate them from recording or publicising cases of rights violations.

Police and secret agents have on numerous occasions in the past been accused of holding arrested human rights activists, political activists, and other government critics incommunicado for long periods during which they sometimes beat or torture their captives in a bid break them.

Zimbabwean and international human rights groups as well as the United States’ ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee have called for the release of Mukoko. – ZimOnline.