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Mutare businessman rekindles Chombo arrest bid

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MUTARE businessman, Tendai Blessing Mangwiro’s lawyers have written to the Registrar of the High Court demanding a ruling on an urgent chamber application filed by Home Affairs minister Ignatius Chombo in July this year seeking to stay his arrest on contempt of court charges.

MUTARE businessman, Tendai Blessing Mangwiro’s lawyers have written to the Registrar of the High Court demanding a ruling on an urgent chamber application filed by Home Affairs minister Ignatius Chombo in July this year seeking to stay his arrest on contempt of court charges.

BY CHARLES LAITON

In a letter dated September 1, 2017, Mangwiro’s lawyers, Mahuni Gidiri Law Chambers, said they wanted to know the result of the urgent chamber application so as to enable them to map the best way forward.

“The judgment in the above matter was scheduled for handing down on August 10 by his lordship Justice (Charles) Hungwe. On the said date, we were advised that the honourable judge had been unable to deliver it by the set date and were told to await advice of its availability. To date, we have not been advised of anything,” the lawyers said.

“It is common cause that on the hearing date of this urgent chamber application, the provisional relief sought by applicant (Chombo) was granted by consent with the parties moving to argue the final relief so as to expedite the disposition of the matter.

“This was done on the understanding that this matter was extremely urgent and had taken needlessly long to finalise. We advise that the need to urgently dispose of the matter has never been as profound as it is now and enquire whether the ruling has been handed down as yet so that we can be guided on how to proceed.”

The Home Affairs minister filed the urgent application after Mangwiro had stepped up efforts to have him incarcerated for failing to cause payment of his $1,5 million and a further $78 900 confiscated by the police in 2008.

The superior court has already ruled in Mangwiro’s favour, but Chombo has allegedly failed to comply with the court order, a move which has since culminated in the issuing of the 90-day incarceration period for contempt of court charges.

In July this year, Chombo was forced to rush to the High Court on an urgent basis to evade being jailed, claiming he had complied with the order by writing to the Finance minister to release the funds.

But Mangwiro dismissed Chombo’s claims, saying, to him, compliance entailed having the money deposited in his account and not letters seeking another ministry’s authority to also make its own decisions.