MDC Vice President Morgen Komichi was Friday handed a wholly suspended three-month jail sentence and a $200 fine after being found guilty of gate-crashing a Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) command centre podium during presidential election results announcement last July.<\/p>\n
Harare magistrate, Ruramai Chitumbura slapped the top opposition politician with the five-month jail term.<\/p>\n
She however suspended three months of the sentence on condition that he did not commit a similar offence in the next five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the accused commits the same offence, he will be jailed without an option to pay a fine,\u201d she ruled.<\/p>\n
Komichi was ordered to pay $200 fine for the remaining two months or risk going to jail.<\/p>\n
He was represented by human rights lawyers Beatrice Mtetwa and Obey Shava.<\/p>\n
Shava said, as lawyers, they were not happy with the judgement, however lenient it sounded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not happy,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cWe will not be calmed by the fact that the sentence is a bit lenient.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo court in its rightful mind would have reached at that conclusion because the accused absolutely did nothing wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn light of this, we will approach the High Court to appeal against both conviction and sentence probably on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his trial, Komichi argued that he did not commit any offence since he went onto the podium during a break by ZEC commissioners.<\/p>\n
When he went onto the podium, Komichi had insisted in front of dozens of local and international journalists that MDC Alliance presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa\u2019s votes were stolen while also accusing ZEC chairperson Priscilla Chigumba of being a liar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MDC Vice President Morgen Komichi was Friday handed a wholly suspended three-month jail sentence and a $200 fine after being found guilty of gate-crashing a Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) command centre podium during presidential election results announcement last July. Harare magistrate, Ruramai Chitumbura slapped the top opposition politician with the five-month jail term. She however […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":5683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[265,60,438,88,351],"class_list":{"0":"post-5679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-parties","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-jail","11":"tag-lawyer","12":"tag-mdc","13":"tag-zec"},"yoast_head":"\n