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Nyore Madzianike-Senior Court Reporter 

CCC members Joana Mamombe and Cecilia Chimbiri have been granted two days to go through three sets of CCTV footage recorded in three businesses in and around the fast food outlet in Belgravia, Harare where they are said to have bought food on the day they allege they were abducted.

The two yesterday applied for more time to view the footage and after hearing the application and the State comment, Chief Magistrate Mrs Faith Mushure adjourned the trial to Wednesday next week.

Mamombe and Chimbiri had been earlier afforded a chance to visit the CID Cyber Unit to view the videos, but returned to court saying they had not finished and needed more time.

Through their lawyers Mr Alec Muchadehama and Mr Jeremiah Bamu, Mamombe and Chimbiri said they have realised that each video was an hour long and needed more time to view the videos.

Mr Muchadehama also told the court that when they initially visited the CID offices, they had only viewed portions of footages from Zuva Service Station and Chicken Inn and could not view the one extracted from Bon Marche Supermarket.

“The actual downloadings are approximately one hour long each. 

“We needed three hours to view them all. 

“We needed to view the entire footages, but we had to go to the relevant portion which the police were interested in and because of time constraints we failed to complete,” he said. 

Mr Muchadehama said they had a flash drive which they requested the police to download the footages onto but to no avail.

He said the police told them that it takes a long time and since they had to return to court in time, they left without downloading them.

“It is not about videos only, but we wanted to see the videos from the original DVRs from Bon Marche. We request that they be given a full 48 hours to deal with the videos,” he said.

The State led by Mr Michael Reza opposed the application for more time to view the footages by the two CCC members saying there was no need to view the whole hour-long videos, as they were only interested in 30 minutes of each footage.

“For purposes of this trial, we are interested in times from 1645hrs to 1715hrs. It is that time we are saying that they be allowed to go and view the remaining video and then we resume court at 1415hrs (yesterday).

“There is no reason to view times which are irrelevant to these proceedings. We said these are times of interest,” he said.

Mr Reza said there was no need for Mamombe and Chimbiri’s lawyers to be worried about watching the whole videos, as they will be afforded the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses who installed the CCTVs.

“It is the right of accused to cross examine witnesses extensively and they will be given that opportunity. We will lead witnesses on times that they were at Belgravia,” he said.

Mr Reza accused the defence lawyers of failing to approach the State in time to get the videos, knowing that they wanted to view them.