AfricaPress-Tanzania: CHADEMA National Chairman Freeman Mbowe and seven other senior officials yesterday asked the High Court to quash both convictions and set aside the sentences imposed on them by the Kisutu Resident Magistrates’ Court for sedition, rioting and unlawful assembly.
Defence counsel Peter Kibatala told Judge Ilvin Mgeta that the Dar res Salaam Court erred in law in finding that the case against his clients was proved beyond reasonable doubt.
On March 10, 2020, Principal Resident Magistrate Thomas Simba sentenced Mbowe and eight others to either pay a fine tottaling 350m/- or go to jail for 60 months cumulatively for sedition, rioting and unlawful assembly. It was after the magistrate convicted them of 12 out of 13 criminal charges.
The magistrate ruled that the prosecution, led by Principal State Attorneys Faraja Nchimbi, Senior State Attorneys Wankyo Simon and State Attorneys Jacqueline Nyantori and Salim Msemo, sufficiently proved beyond reasonable doubt that all accused committed the offences.
In his submissions, however, Mr Kibatala asked Judge Mgeta to find that his clients’ appeal had merits and should, thus, be allowed. “The court should henceforth quash the convictions and set aside the sentences imposed and subsequently acquit the appellants forthwith,” he prayed.
He submitted that the trial magistrate had failed to evaluate the evidence on record, instead recited their respective testimonies and jumped into unfounded conclusions and had failed to consider the defence evidence, summarily and wholesomely disregarding it contrary to law.
According to him, the appellants had no duty of providing evidence to shake that of the prosecution, but just raising a reasonable doubt.
He submitted that the trial court had failed to analyse elements of each offence against the evidence on record to justify its verdict.
“There was no critical analysis made by the court to the charges against the appellants in comparison to the evidence tendered,” he told the court, adding that the trial court had erred in admitting the video tape and camera evidence contrary to the law relating to the admission of electronic evidence.
Furthermore, Mr Kibatala submitted that the court erred in failing to hold that some of the charges were duplex and fatally defective for failing to sufficiently disclose the nature of the discontent likely to be raised by alleged utterances, thereby prejudicing the appellants’ defence.
He also stated that some of charges were defective for failing to disclose the identity of communities who were likely to be subjects of the promotion of ill-will and that the trial court had failed to hold some of the charges vague, embarrassing and prejudicial to the appellants’ ability to defend themselves.
The lawyer submitted further that the trial court had failed to consider, without assigning any reason, their defence of alibi that they were not present in the place and time when some of the charges were alleged to have been committed and that the alleged spoken words amounted to criminal offences.
In addition, the appellants’ lawyer told the court that the trial court had erred in law in sentencing them to pay fines which were reckoned to operate consecutively while the alternative custodian sentences were held to run concurrently.
Apart from Mbowe, other appellants are John Mnyika, the newly elected Secretary General, Salum Mwalimu, who is Deputy Secretary General (Zanzibar) and Peter Msigwa, the MP for Iringa Urban.
During trial, the prosecution called eight witnesses to prove the charges of unlawful assembly, rioting after proclamation, raising discontent and ill-will for unlawful purposes, sedition and inciting the commission of offences committed between February 1 and 16, 2018 in the city.
