No free medical tests for charged court official - State
THE State yesterday objected to the application by court officials and their co-accused to be examined at health facilities of their choice to prove that they were allegedly tortured on suspicion of cocaine trafficking. This is in a case where eight court officials and two businessmen have been charged with trafficking in cocaine, which was part of the exhibits in a case that was already before another court. Responding to the defence’s application yesterday, Deputy Chief State Advocate Gamaleo Zimba said the Prisons Act Chapter 97 of the Laws of Zambia provides for appointment of medical officers in prisons and that the Zambia Correctional Service has medical facilities which should attend to prisoners’ concerns. Mr. Zimba told Kafue based Magistrate Kawama Mwamfuli that the defence had not given evidence to oust prison medical officers from performing their statutory duties of attending to prisoners’ health concerns. He also argued that the defence’s submission that Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) officers could be involved in the offence, as they were the ones who seized and subjected cocaine to test, amounted to defence lawyers placing evidence on record from the bar. “Is this court being requested to declare investigations by DEC unconstitutional because they infringed on the prisoners’ rights to a fair trial? What is that the defence are seeking from this court by raising that constitutional issue? Those are the questions in the minds of the State,” Mr. Zimba said. In reply, defence lawyer Keith Mweemba said the State had not given a meaningful response because at no point did the defence invite the court to adjudicate on the Constitution. “We simply invited this court to take judicial notice of Article 18 of the Constitution which provides for a fair trial so that when full trial commences, there should be no argument of afterthought by the prosecution because DEC is an interested party as it is not in dispute that they had custody of these drugs. “This court has power to take judicial notice of the contents of another public document. This court can check Honourable (Kenneth) Mulife’s record to discover that the purported drugs were once in the custody of DEC,” Mr. Mweemba said. He said the State had cited the Prisons Act out of context because it did not exclude accused persons from accessing medical services at facilities of their choice adding that in the case of the People versus Hakainde Hichilema and others, Magistrate Greenwell Malumani granted the defence a similar application. He said torture allegations are serious and the defence does not trust prison authorities to be the right entity to investigate the matter. “We need this court to make an order for medical examination to know who tortured them, then appropriate action will be taken but it is not for this court to make that pronouncement…” he said. The case has been adjourned to October 3, 2018 for ruling and possible trial.