A court in Zimbabwe on Wednesday acquitted a US journalist and a British freelancer of covering the country's March 29 elections without accreditation, saying the state had failed to prove the offence and ordered them to be released, news agencies have reported.
Magistrate Gloria Takundwa said the state's evidence against New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak and Britain's Stephen Bevan, a freelance journalist with the Sunday Telegraph, was "inconsistent and unreliable" and that the two should be released from remand, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) reported.
Takundwa also reprimanded police for the "unlawful detention" of the two journalists after the attorney-general's office had ordered their release.
Bearak and Bevan were arrested on April 3 during a police raid on a tourist lodge in Harare aimed at rooting out foreign journalists who were covering the elections without accreditation.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, said, “Barry’s family, friends and colleagues are overjoyed that the court threw out the preposterous charges against him, and that he is on his way home. His only offense was honest journalism, telling Zimbabwe’s story at a time of tormented transition. He had no intention of becoming part of that story.”
A report in the Times said that Bearak was caught up in shifting legal machinations by the authorities, and the hearing of his case was postponed several times. He was first arrested on a charge of working as a journalist without accreditation, but when the police realised that the press law had been changed, he was recharged with falsely presenting himself as a journalist.
