A Picture of Horror
Police sent white farmer to his death

29^th June 2003

A Zimbabwean policeman who witnessed the murder of the first white farmer to die in President Robert Mugabe's land seizure campaign has admitted that police could have saved the man's life - but were ordered by their superiors to stand by and let a gang of so-called war veterans abduct and kill him. In the first inside account of how Mugabe has turned the police force into an instrument of repression, Lovemore Magombedze disclosed that he and others investigating the killing of David Stevens were instructed by superiors in Harare to present it as a case of killing in self-defence. The former detective has been granted asylum in Britain. He fled from Zimbabwe in fear of his life after a colleague who tried to reveal the truth about Stevens's death was killed by a lorry driven by a leading war veteran. Magombedze was warned: "You will be next." "I used to love my job, I got a lot of respect from people, but Mugabe turned the police into his number one weapon," said the 31-year-old father of two who is now working as a night guard in an Essex hotel. "The system was so topsy-turvy that instead of war vets being arrested they were manning roadblocks with us - and I was ordered to pervert the course of justice," he said.

The killing of Stevens, 48, in April 2000 marked the start of a campaign aimed at keeping Mugabe in power, using the war veterans and thugs from the ruling Zanu PF party. Stevens was abducted from his farm in Macheke, 60 miles southeast of Harare, by war veterans while his wife was collecting one of their four children from a school hockey trip, He was driven to Murehwa where he was tortured, then shot less than three minutes' walk from a police station. One of his murderers drank his blood. Twelve other white farmers have since been killed and all but 600 of an original 4,500 have been driven off their farms. Most farms have been taken over by politicians, generals, police chiefs, judges and relatives of Mugabe. Commercial food production has collapsed, leaving 150,000 labourers unemployed and an estimated 7m people facing starvation. The detective's chilling account of the Stevens murder confirms accusations by human rights and opposition groups that Mugabe has transformed the police into a political tool. It is also an embarrassment for Interpol, which recently offered Zimbabwe's police chief, Augustine Chihuri, the post of honorary vice-president. Stevens's widow Maria, who now lives in Oxfordshire, said she was not surprised by Magombedze's revelations. "I know the police killed my husband," she said. "They are no longer there to protect people. I hope he doesn't expect me to forgive him but I am glad that one of those police has finally decided to come clean. It is time more people spoke out."

Magombedze was one of a small group of men on duty at Murehwa police station on the Saturday morning when Stevens was killed. "Suddenly this procession of vehicles arrived at the police station," he said. "It was like a movie: high-speed cars, clouds of dust, shooting, brakes squealing, people opening car doors and running out. Five white farmers were running away from the war vets, pleading, 'Help us! They are shooting at us and want to kill us.' There were between 30 and 50 war vets singing and chanting Zanu PF slogans and they had vehicles belonging to the party and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). But we told them to stop and didn't allow them in. They only had sticks and two or three small guns so we didn't think they could overpower us." Then the officer in charge arrived. "This was strange," said Magombedze. "Normally they don't work on Saturdays and nobody from the station had called him. "This officer invited the war vets and CIO men into his office. To our astonishment, he then allowed them to abduct the farmers from the police station and take them to a compound in the township. The farmers were screaming, 'These guys were shooting at us and you are letting them take us? They are going to kill us!' " Shaking his head, Magombedze said: "The police had the chance to save Stevens's life - we knew where he was and could easily have got him out, but we didn't. I followed for a while with a colleague in an unmarked car but we were pulled off so didn't witness the final moments. I know what happened next from our subsequent investigation. The farmers were separated in groups and taken to different places, including the cemetery for heroes of independence. They were beaten up severely. At one point Stevens said 'Why don't you just kill us? I can't take this any more'. One of the war vets put the barrel of his rifle inside Stevens's mouth and fired. But he didn't get a proper grip, probably because they were all high on marijuana. So the bullet just cut through the skin and came out of the mouth. Then one of them started screaming, 'Are you crazy? Don't you know how to kill a man?' He took out his shotgun, placed it against Stevens's chest and fired. The other farmers were severely beaten up and left for dead though they had not been killed."

Magombedze was put on the investigation under the supervision of officers from Harare. "We were given clear orders on the 'facts' the government wanted to come out. The official version was to be that Stevens's death was caused by self-defence. "We were not allowed to arrest the war vets even though they were trespassing on property, abducting and beating people and committing all sorts of atrocities. Murehwa is not a big area and I knew quite well who they were. But this was a political case and the forms where we normally write the grounds of the case were left blank. The statements of the other white farmers were left out and some witnesses were forced to say Stevens was shooting at them." A policeman since 1991, Magombedze felt "torn apart" by the case and was unable to sleep, tormented by nightmares. Last year he and his colleague on the Stevens case decided to approach foreign election observers to tell them the truth. They were spotted by Mugabe's intelligence agents. Shortly afterwards his friend was killed. "Then a CIO guy warned me, 'You know what happened to your colleague? We are after you next.'" The Stevens case was not the only time Magombedze was ordered to ignore evidence. Investigating the murder of a father and son in Nyamhanga village, he found that a local Zanu PF MP had ordered party thugs to kill them. "We even had taped confessions," he said, "but I was told to change the evidence to let the killers free." When Magombedze arrested a well-known war veteran who had burnt down a restaurant his station chief was furious and the arsonist was freed. Magombedze decided to flee and sought leave, claiming his mother was seriously ill. He flew to London with his wife and children - and heard later that his younger brother had been beaten and his mother's house had been set on fire. Four men were tried last October for the murder of Stevens, but were freed. From the safety of his new home in Britain Magombedze said with sadness: "I miss my country but it has become a land of fear."

Christina Lamb - The Sunday Times (UK)