ZIMBABWE: Trial of white Zimbabwean farmers charged with resisting eviction is postponed

The trial of white Zimbabwean farmers charged with resisting eviction from land targeted for seizure has been postponed. The trial of white Zimbabwean farmers charged with resisting eviction from land targeted for seizure was postponed to December on Wednesday (October 31) after the state failed to present papers requested by defence lawyers. Defence lawyer David Drury had asked the prosecution to provide information from the state land allocation committee detailing how the farms in question were targeted for seizure, before the trial could begin. "The case has been remanded until the 17th of December because the Ministry of Lands hasn't furnished the courts with papers required so that they can proceed. So we come back on the 17th of December," farmer John Norman Estwood told Reuters. In 2000, President Robert Mugabe's government embarked on a drive to take commercial farms from whites in order to resettle landless blacks. Only an estimated 600 out of the previous 4,500 white farmers still remain on the land. Eleven white farmers from Zimbabwe 's northwestern Mahsonaland West province, who appealed against eviction notices issued by the government, now face trial for failing to leave the farms after a September 30 deadline lapsed. If convicted, the farmers face heavy fines or jail terms of up to two years. Critics say Mugabe's controversial land policy has plunged the southern African country -- once a food exporter -- into a severe economic crisis marked by food shortages and the highest inflation in the world, above 7,900 percent. .

ITN Source | October 31, 2007

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