As early as 7 o\u2019clock in the morning, people had started thronging Lilongwe High Court to hear the judgement of a case in which former minister of justice, Raphael Kasambara, former Malawi Defence Force (MDF) soldier, Macdonald Kumwembe and Pika Manondo were the accused.<\/p>\n
Kasambara faced a charge of conspiracy to murder while Kumwembe and Manondo had an additional charge of attempt to murder former budget director Paul Mphwiyo.<\/p>\n
Judge Michael Mtambo convicted the three but is yet to pass sentence.<\/p>\n
The courtroom threatened to bust in its seams as hundreds of people followed the proceedings, outside the courtroom through a Public Address (PA) system. Times Media Group mounted the PA system as a corporate social responsibility to enable people to follow the proceedings and accord them access to information as their constitutional right.<\/p>\n
The oldest and biggest media empire in the country also broadcast the proceedings live on Times Television and Times Radio following a rigorous and successful application to the High Court to allow it serve the public.<\/p>\n
Of the accused persons, the first to arrive was Kasambara as time was approaching 9 o\u2019clock in the morning followed by the other two. Kasambara was dressed in a blue suit. One of the things he carried was a Pieta booklet. Pieta is used by Catholics for daily prayers.<\/p>\n
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Rosemary Kachale, and her team and other few lawyers availed themselves in the court room.<\/p>\n
Judge Mtambo arrived in the court at around 9:08am and he started by giving a brief of the case. At times, Kasambara could afford a smile. For example, he smiled when Mtambo gave his reaction to the evidence given by Kasambara\u2019s maid, Jessie Mussa. Kumwembe and Manondo also smiled at times as the entire court did depending on what Mtambo had said.<\/p>\n
After Mtambo made pronounced the judgement, there was cathedral silence in the court.<\/p>\n
The convicts remained in their positions as people walked out of the courtroom. Later the convicts were taken out by police officers and were swarmed by reporters and camera persons on their way to Maula Maximum Prison to wait for their sentencing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As early as 7 o\u2019clock in the morning, people had started thronging Lilongwe High Court to hear the judgement of a case in which former minister of justice, Raphael Kasambara, former Malawi Defence Force (MDF) soldier, Macdonald Kumwembe and Pika Manondo were the accused. Kasambara faced a charge of conspiracy to murder while Kumwembe and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28594,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28575\/revisions\/28594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}