(MISA/IFEX) – The government has said that it wants to put on record that it does not consider “The Daily News” editor-in-chief Geoff Nyarota, or any other editor in Zimbabwe to be its enemy. Minister of State for Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo said this in response to a story published in “The Daily News” […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The government has said that it wants to put on record that it does not consider “The Daily News” editor-in-chief Geoff Nyarota, or any other editor in Zimbabwe to be its enemy. Minister of State for Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo said this in response to a story published in “The Daily News” on 1 August 2000. The story had said that the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) had hired a hitman, Bernard Masara, to assassinate Nyarota.
Moyo said that the government had no reason to fear editors and that it saw editors as “real custodians” of the public’s right to know, with duties and obligations to inform impartially, objectively and factually. He said that his department had been “shocked” to read the article in “The Daily News” about the alleged assassination. He denied that Masara was an operative within the CIO and that he was ever hired to perform any duties for the organisation.
Background Information
Masara surfaced at “The Daily News” claiming that he had been hired by the CIO to assassinate Nyarota, but that he had developed cold feet and could not carry out the killing.
Not only did he expose the plot, he also identified the senior CIO officer directly involved and provided the names of four war veterans recruited for the assignment – and their national registration numbers. To prove the authenticity of his story, the would-be assassin called his CIO handler on the phone and, while the senior editors of “The Daily News” listened in astonishment to the conversation on a speakerphone, he discussed details of the assassination with him.
Masara told the newspaper that he was recruited by the CIO to liquidate Nyarota in order to silence “The Daily News” because it had “become a formidable opponent of government.” Masara said the deputy director of the CIO, Robert Manungom, had told him that Nyarota had to be eliminated because “The Daily News” was acting like “a political commissar” of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
