Dar es Salaam: Court fixes date for Zombe acquittal appeal hearing

Written by DAILY NEWS Reporter.

AN appeal lodged by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), opposing acquittal of Abdallah Zombe and eight other police officials over the killing of four people, including three mineral dealers, will be heard in two consecutive days starting April 22.

Court of Appeal Justices Edward Rutakangwa, Mbarouk Mbarouk and Bernard Luanda have been assigned to hear the appeal case, which attracted public attention considering the circumstances in which the victims of the crime were killed.

At the time of the killings in 2006, Zombe was the Dar es Salaam Regional Crime Officer (RCO). In his appeal, the DPP has advanced 11 grounds to fault the judgment given by Justice Salum Massati, who heard the case when he was a judge at the High Court.

Zombe and his ex-police officers were charged with four counts of killing three mineral businessmen - Sabinus Chigumbi and his relatives Ephrahim Chigumbi and Mathias Lunkombe from Mahenge in Morogoro Region, and Juma Ndugu, ex-taxi driver at Manzese area in the city.

The four people were killed one by one by the police using a gun on January 14, 2006, at Pande Forest, in Kinondoni District in Dar es Salaam. Others who were charged alongside Assistant Commissioner of Police Zombe include Senior Superintendent of Police Christopher Bageni, Assistant Superintendent of Police Ahmed Makelle, Constable Jane Andrew, Constable Noel Leornard and Constable Emmanuel Mabula.

The rest are Corporal Felix Sedrick, Corporal Nyangerela Moris, Constable Michael Shonza, Corporal Abeneth Salo, Corporal Rajabu Bakari, Corporal Festus Gwabisabi and Corporal Rashid Lema, who died before the end of the trial.

Justice Massati acquitted all the accused persons on September 17, 2009, for prosecution’s failure to prove the charges against them. He had held that the accused were not the ones who committed the murder and directed the police to look for the killers, who were still at large.

But in the appeal, the DPP alleges that, according to the testimony presented in court, all the accused were guilty of the charges preferred against them. During the trial, the prosecution called 37 witnesses and produced 23 documentary exhibits pointing to the guilty for all of the accused.

Prosecution’s evidence shows that all the accused, except Zombe participated in the peaceful arrest of the four men at Sinza area and that after their arrest they were handicuffed and whisked in a police vehicle, but later were found dead the next day at the Muhimbili National Hospital.

Applying the principal of the last person found with the deceased, the prosecutor had asked the court to hold that it was the accused persons who killed them, alleging that there was no defence testimony that detailed on the mysterious disappearances of the victims after being arrested.

The prosecution had further alleged that the said police officials committed the offences with common intention and with malice aforethought because of their behaviours, conducts and acts before and after the killings.

Source: Daily News (02/04/2013): http://www.dailynews.co.tz/index.php/local-news/16053-court-fixes-date-for-zombe-acquittal-appeal-hearing