Jacob Ngarivhume set free after eight months

By Staff Writer

High Court judge Justice Pisirayi Kwenda has ended the detention of opposition leaders Jacob Ngarivhume after setting aside both conviction and sentence.

In his ruling, Justice Kwenda said the state failed to prove a link between Ngarivhume and the Twitter account that was used as the basis to jail him.

Ngarivhume was convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment by the Magistrate Court in April and has been in jail since then.

He appealed against both his conviction and sentence.

Handing down the judgement Monday, High Court judge Pisirayi Kwenda quashed the lower court’s conviction ordering that the politician was not guilty after the State failed to provide evidence.

“It would not be right to uphold the conviction. In the result the appeal is allowed and the conviction is quashed,” Kwenda said.

Speaking to the media just after Ngarivhume’s acquittal, his lawyer Professor Lovemore Madhuku said: “The High Court has set aside the conviction of Jacob Ngarivhume, so as we speak he is now a very free man.

“They agreed with us in every respect that the Magistrates Court did not have a basis at all, so he had his eight months wasted as we can say.

“He is not guilty and is walking out a free man so he will have his Christmas at home.

“They did not have any evidence linking our client to the Twitter account used and also the court had to observe that the magistrate convicted him in respect of a twitter account that was different from the twitter account that the state was parading around, so the state did accept that they did not have any strong case.”