Trial: 'UK plotted to kill Mugabe'
Monday, February 17, 2003 Posted: 12:21 PM EST (1721 GMT)
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Tsvangirai says he was framed Story Tools
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HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- The star witness in the treason trial of Zimbabwe's main opposition leader has said he was ttold former colonial ruler Britain had approved of an assassination plot against President Robert Mugabe.
Ari Ben-Menashe -- a Canadian political consultant whose testimony has been called into question by the defence -- had earlier hinted of CIA iinvolvement in the alleged plot to murder the embattled African ruler.
On Monday, Ben-Menashe said Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai told him in London last year that Britain had offered money to bribe Zimbabwe's airforce commander to help in the alleged assassination plot.
Tsvangirai and two opposition colleagues face possible death sentences if convicted of treason through plotting to kill Mugabe.
Defence lawyers allege Ben-Menashe was paid by Mugabe's government to frame Tsvangirai, and have attacked his credibility on a number of fronts.
"Accused number one (Tsvangirai) said he had the approval of the United Kingdom," Ben-Menashe told the court.
"He said he was getting money from the UK government for the purpose of bribing General Shiri in order to carry out the plot," Ben-Menashe said, referring to Air Marshall Perence Shiri.
Asked by the South African defence lawyer George Bizos why he had not referred to Britain's alleged involvement in his statements to police and earlier in the trial, Ben-Menashe said: "That's between you and the attorney-general."
Ben-Menashe said his company had made an audio tape of the London meeting with Tsvangirai. But state prosecutors said the recording was largely inaudible and would not be used in the case against the MDC officials.
The state's case hinges on a video tape of another meeting between Tsvangirai and Ben-Menashe in Canada, and whether Tsvangirai was set up to answer innocent questions that had been doctored to implicate him in an assassination plot.
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Mugabe's "elimination" was allegedly discussed by Tsvangirai and a political consultant. |
The defence has tried to show that $615,000 paid to Ben-Menashe's Montreal-based firm by Mugabe's government was a payment for trapping Tsvangirai.
Mugabe defeated the MDC leader in a presidential election last year that was condemned as fraudulent by the opposition and some Western governments.
The political tension comes as Zimbabwe faces its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, with nearly half the country's 14 million people facing starvation.
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