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Zimbabwe: U.S. Warns of Targeted Sanctions Against Soldiers Implicated in Violence
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SW Radio Africa (London)
2 May 2008
Posted to the web 2 May 2008
Lance Guma
The United States government has warned that individuals taking part in the current wave of post-election violence in Zimbabwe risk being placed on it's targeted sanctions list.
US ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, told a press conference Tuesday that he was personally recording incidents of violence in the country and has conducted several interviews with the victims. 'We are looking and taking note of the people responsible for the violence. Out of the 500 cases that I have handled, only one has been attributed to the MDC as an aggressor. We have affidavits; we have the names of the perpetrators. We know the perpetrators and there will be justice at the end of the day,' McGee warned.
At the beginning of April opposition sources handed over a document to the media that contained the names of 200 senior army officials that had been deployed in all 10 of the country's provinces. Affidavits written by the victims of violence confirm that those are indeed the names of the people behind the terror campaign. McGee says the 200 soldiers on the list will most likely be added to an updated list of Zimbabweans barred from any travel to the US, or transacting any business there. The Ambassador also said the Zimbabwean government had asked for evidence of the political violence and the embassy responded by handing over a detailed dossier. 'I have tried to talk to the government and ZANU-PF but they have not been forthcoming,' McGee said.
One of the victims of the state sponsored brutality is freelance journalist Stanley Karombo. He was abducted on 18th April while taking photographs of Mugabe during the Independence Day ceremony at Gwanzura stadium in Harare's Highfield suburb. He was only released 3 days later. Several plainclothes policemen took him to the changing rooms below the stadium and started beating him up for allegedly, 'sending films to America.' Karombo said they also demanded he take them to his house, where upon arrival they turned it upside down while reading every single document inside. 'At 9 pm, they blindfolded me and took me somewhere else. I woke up the next day in a cell.'
Karombo said he can no longer bear the dark and is afraid at night. He said: 'I keep having nightmares and I am having problems with my vision.'
We have gone through all anti-Zimbabwe propaganda in 10 years and now, we have arrived to the most feared political maneuver; THE POLITICS OF KILLINGS. Tendencies exposed in the poor third world shows that Zimbabweans will not be spared, people will die in droves. We ask God Almighty, Allah Peace Be Upon Him, Buda, Musikavanhu the Creator to intervene in this precious hour of need. We are going to be wiped, we are to die, and this will prove a point that as said before that the Zimbabwean situation has been recipe for chaos. I pray that political leaders rise... [Read Full Text]
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