Zimbabwean opposition politician Job Sikhala is to be released after more than a year-and-a-half in prison, his lawyers said on Tuesday, after a Harare court handed him a suspended sentence.
An outspoken and popular government critic, Sikhala, 51, was one of the most prominent figures to be arrested in recent years in what rights groups have described as a crackdown on dissenters in the country.
“He is now a free man. This is the only case that has been keeping him in custody, so he is going to come out,” Sikhala’s lawyer Harrison Nkomo told reporters outside the court.
A former lawmaker, Sikhala was convicted of inciting public violence last week after a year-long trial supporters said was politically motivated.
Another opposition member of parliament, Godfrey Sithole, was found guilty on the same charges.
Both were handed a two-year suspended sentence on Tuesday.
This should mean long-awaited freedom for Sikhala, with his lawyers saying he was expected to walk out on Wednesday morning.
A small crowd of supporters chanted and danced in celebration on the court’s steps after the verdict.
Sikhala and Sithole were convicted of inciting supporters to avenge the death of their political ally, More-blessing Ali, who was murdered by a ruling party activist in May 2022.
It wasn’t the first brush with the law for the firebrand politician, whose long and troubled political career includes more than 60 arrests, according to his lawyers. The last was in June 2022 over a speech he gave at a memorial service for Ali, whose mutilated body was found in a well days earlier.
He has been held in a maximum-security prison in the capital since, having unsuccessfully applied for bail more than a dozen times.
Douglas Coltart, another defence lawyer, said allowing for Sikhala’s release, the lenient sentence underscored the unfair treatment his client has been subjected to.
“The fact that he has been denied bail and kept in custody all this time is a horrific injustice,” he said.
One of Zimbabwe’s top rights lawyers, Coltart has himself been in legal trouble recently. In September, he was arrested after objecting to police questioning two of his clients in hospital.
Charges against him were eventually dropped last week.
Critics have long accused the ruling Zanu-PF of using the courts to silence opposition voices.
AFP