A rural Madziwa woman, jailed recently for taking part in the January protests, has adamantly claimed she was never part of the violent skirmishes while insisting her arrest and incarceration was a typical case of wrongful identify.<\/p>\n
Auxiliary Antanasi (21) who is serving time for public violence, told NewZimbabwe.com at Chikurubi Female Prison recently that she was shocked when a Bindura magistrate pronounced a guilty verdict against her.<\/p>\n
She was sentenced to 36 months in prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never participated in the protest, I did not even know there was such protest then,\u201d Antanasi said, adding, \u201cI am not a social media person and rarely listen to radio news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose protests never took place in rural Madziwa (Mashonaland Province) but I later learnt that over 200 km in urban Bindura, some people protested.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she needed some legal assistance so she could lodge an appeal against what she feels was \u201cmiscarriage of justice, a case of mistaken identity, pure community hatred or misfortune\u201d.<\/p>\n
The mother of a 5-year-old daughter said she was surprised when police came to arrest her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was at home doing my normal household chores and had no reason of participating in the protest\u2026for what,\u201d an emotional Antanasi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI may have my own issues that are not going on well in my life, not political but that could not make me stage a protest in an isolated in remote place like Madziwa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat day I even left my 5 year old child, knowing fully well that I will be back in few minutes after what they had called me for vetting.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the next thing I was detained, court process was fast tracked and I was found guilty without even opening my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, her case is not an isolated one.<\/p>\n
During the fast-track court processes in which over 1 000 public violence suspects were arrested in January, lawyers representing them staged a protest march against what they found to be miscarriage of justice against most of those caught up in dragnet arrests by security forces.<\/p>\n
The lawyers claimed most violence suspects were deliberately denied bail while some had their cases fast-tracked without following due process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A rural Madziwa woman, jailed recently for taking part in the January protests, has adamantly claimed she was never part of the violent skirmishes while insisting her arrest and incarceration was a typical case of wrongful identify. Auxiliary Antanasi (21) who is serving time for public violence, told NewZimbabwe.com at Chikurubi Female Prison recently that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":7791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[216,363,60,68,61,403],"class_list":{"0":"post-7784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-community","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-jail","12":"tag-protests","13":"tag-sentence","14":"tag-violence"},"yoast_head":"\n