A police detective who arrested Mthwakazi Liberation Front secretary-general Paul Siwela for alleged treason yesterday disowned the search warrant presented in court as the one he used to search the politician’s house.
Siwela is appearing alongside Charles Thomas and John Gazi in the ongoing treason trial before Bulawayo High Court Judge, Justice Nicholas Ndou, sitting with assessors Fanuel Damba and Elliot Nyoni.
Detective Sergeant George Ngwenya, who arrested Siwela on March 4 last year, told the court that after he heard Thomas had been arrested for distributing the allegedly subversive flyers, he asked for a search warrant.
He said the warrant was issued by the then Officer Commanding Law and Order in Bulawayo, Superintendent Andrew Mupungu, who has since been transferred to Harare.
Ngwenya is the seventh witness in the case. The detective said he went to Siwela’s offices with his team whose names he could not remember, but were youngsters he was not used to.
“We found flyers with various messages,” Ngwenya said.
He said they also recovered a grand plan document, a blue MLF T-Shirt and after that they also searched Siwela’s car where they recovered some MLF membership cards, calendars and a meeting register.
Advocate Lucas Nkomo representing Siwela and Thomas presented a search warrant to Ngwenya and asked if it was the one he used to seach his client’s office.
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“This is not the one that I used. The one I used had a date stamp,” Ngwenya replied. Nkomo said that would mean he illegally searched Siwela’s office if he disowned the document in court.
Ngwenya said Siwela was arrested after he read the flyers and discovered they had messages whose target were armed forces, civil servants, and the public, inci
