HARARE – Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) national spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere has filed an appeal at the High Court after her conviction for publishing falsehoods with an intention to undermine the police.
The lawyer wants her conviction and sentence set aside.
Mahere argues that Harare magistrate Taurai Manuwere erred in convicting her on a section of law that was repealed.
Manuwere convicted Mahere on April 5 but spared her jail time, instead fining her US$500.
Her conviction came after she in 2020 tweeted that a police officer had fatally struck, with a baton stick, a baby strapped on its mother’s back while enforcing traffic regulations in Harare.
Police refuted the allegations and said the lifeless baby captured in a viral video was alive.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) said Tuesday: “In her appeal, which was filed at the Harare High Court on Monday, Advocate Mahere argued that magistrate Manuwere grossly erred and misdirected himself when after having accepted that section 31(a)(iii) of the Criminal Law Act was declared invalid under the former constitution, he went on to arrive at the finding that the same provision was resuscitated or was validated by the coming into operation of the current constitution (in 2013) and on account of the General Laws Amendment Act.”
Mahere argues that Manuwere “grossly erred and misdirected himself by completely ignoring the fact that she was targeted for prosecution and that her right and legitimate expectation to equality before the law was violated rendering the charge incompetent and invalid.”
The matter is pending.
