ZIMBABWE: Was Tsvangirai `stung' by Mugabe agents?

ZIMBABWE: Was Tsvangirai `stung' by Mugabe agents?

BY NORM DIXON

The SBS Dateline current affairs program on February 13, 2002, broadcast a
special report -- ``Killing Mugabe: The Tsvangirai Conspiracy'' -- and a
follow-up report on February 20, by Walkley Award-winning Australian
journalist Mark Davis. The reports alleged that Zimbabwe opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai had ordered the assassination of Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai is appearing in a Harare court facing charges of treason based on these reports.

A secretly filmed video of a meeting held in Montreal on December 4 --
attended by executives of the Dickens and Madson (D&M) ``political
consultancy'' firm, Tsvangirai and at least one Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) adviser -- was the central evidence for the allegations
presented in both Dateline programs.

The other key piece of evidence cited was a statement issued by D&M
which, Davis reported, said the firm in October had been ``contracted by
Tsvangirai to kill Robert Mugabe. The Montreal meeting ... was to
discuss how to install Tsvangirai into power after the assassination.''

The whole case against Tsvangirai rests on the assertions of D&M
executives, Ari Ben-Menashe and Alexandre Legault.

Credibility

Legault is wanted in three US states on charges that include
racketeering, organised fraud and mail fraud. The charges relate to a
fraudulent investment scheme that robbed 300 elderly people of savings
worth a total of US$13 million.

A Canada-based corporation owned by Legault, the Carlington Sales
Company, was involved in a scandal in Zambia last year in which maize
destined for hungry people was bought and paid for but not delivered;
US$6 million went missing. The company lists Ben-Menashe as one of its
``foreign agents''. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Disclosure
program on December 4 revealed that Carlington regularly fails to
deliver commodities after payment has been received.

Ben-Menashe, a former agent of Israel's Mossad spy service, played a
peripheral role in the US Iran-contra scandal in the late 1980s until
his exposure led to his sacking.

Peddling his notoriety, Ben-Menashe travelled the world contacting
left-leaning investigative journalists (including Green Left Weekly in
1992) to ``reveal'' numerous international conspiracies.

His greatest claim to fame was as a source for the ``October Surprise''
allegations: that Republican Party figures struck a deal with the
Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran to delay the release of US hostages
until after the November 1980 presidential poll, thereby thwarting a
``surprise'' poll advantage for incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter.

The October Surprise claims disintegrated when the central informant was
exposed as having fabricated the allegations. Ben-Menashe's claims too
were proven to be untrue. The US media organisations that had championed
October Surprise turned on Ben-Menashe. PBS Frontline announced that
Ben-Menashe's ``credibility with reporters collapsed because some of his
assertions proved implausible''.

Esquire's Craig Unger in 1992 even penned an article for the Village
Voice titled ``The trouble with Ari'' in which he explained the allure
and perils of dealing with Ben-Menashe: ``Ari has put five or six dozen
journalists from all over the world through roughly the same paces. His
seduction begins with a display of his mastery of the trade craft of the
legendary Israeli intelligence services... His astute analysis and
mid-boggling revelations can stir even the most jaded old hand... Listen
to him, trust him, print his story verbatim -- then sit around and watch
your career go up in flames.''

`A deal is struck'

Davis was told that ``one of the principals of Dickens and Madson''
(since revealed as Ben-Menashe) met with Tsvangirai in London in
October. ``According to D&M [i.e., Ben-Menashe], Tsvangirai requested
the assassination of President Mugabe at their first meeting and a deal
was struck'', Davis reported.

D&M told Davis that at a second meeting in November in London,
Tsvangirai agreed to pay US$500,000 and promised the company contracts
with a future MDC government in return for the hit on Mugabe.

If the D&M's spy-cam video of the October meeting is viewed with the
assumption that Ben-Menashe and Legault are telling the truth, the
footage seems damning.

But what if Ben-Menashe and Legault deliberately set out to entrap the
opposition leader as part of a ``sting'' operation, at the direction of
the Mugabe regime?

Dateline rejected this possibility. In the first program, Davis did not
mention Ben-Menashe and Legault's checkered histories. In the February
20 program, Davis did concede that ``many people have branded Ari
Ben-Menashe a liar''. However, in a telephone conversation with Green
Left Weekly on February 21, Davis was emphatic: ``I don't believe
[Ben-Menashe] is a liar.''

The meeting screened by Dateline certainly reveals that Tsvangirai and
D&M discussed detailed arrangements to return Zimbabwe to constitutional
rule, in cooperation with a section of the Zimbabwe military, following
an ``elimination'' of Mugabe.

However, the dialogue does not prove that Tsvangirai ordered such an act
to be carried out. It is apparent that Tsvangirai does not even believe
he would be the automatic beneficiary of it. Much of the discussion
revolves around the preparedness of a military figure, whose name
Dateline obscures, to guarantee the eventual holding of elections.

Did D&M deliberately set out to entrap Tsvangirai by falsely claiming to
represent an anti-Mugabe section of the military? Did Tsvangirai
foolishly agree to explore such an approach in the light of Zimbabwe
defence force commander Vitalis Zvinavashe's blunt statement that the
army would not accept an MDC victory in the March 9-10 presidential
election? Or was Tsvangirai's discussion of hypothetical scenarios put
to him by D&M taken out of context, as he maintains?

Double agents?

In the February 13 program, Davis stated that D&M ``has recently been
engaged by [the Mugabe] government, but four months ago, when this story
begins, they were free agents''. The implication being that D&M offered
its services to Mugabe only after Tsvangirai had asked them to arrange
the president's death. When GLW spoke to Davis, he remained convinced
that D&M had no business links with Mugabe prior to October.

However, later statements by Ben-Menashe indicate that Davis was misled.
The February 14 Canadian National Post reported that Ben-Menashe told
the newspaper that D&M had a ``long-standing working relationship'' with
Mugabe and his government. ``Mr Tsvangirai knocked on the wrong door'',
Ben-Menashe quipped.

Ben-Menashe made similar comments to the London Daily Telegraph,
reproduced in the February 14 Sydney Morning Herald: ``What [Tsvangirai]
didn't know was that we had a relationship with Mr Mugabe that dated
back quite a few years.'' Ben-Menashe told the February 14 Toronto Globe
and Mail: ``We had a long-term relationship with President Mugabe.
Personally, I've known him since the '80s.''

The fact that D&M was working for Mugabe strengthens Tsvangirai's case
that he was ``set up''. In a statement released on February 14, he
stated that it was D&M that approached the MDC to offer its services to
build the party's image in North America. The MDC accepted and meetings
were arranged.

However, Tsvangirai's claim that ``at no stage during the first three
meetings was the issue of elimination or assassination ever discussed''
is at odds with the videotaped discussion and his later statements.

His account of the taped meeting also does not match what appears on the
tape: ``Mr Menashe kept wandering from the issues discussed previously.
He and his team from nowhere introduced discussion around the issue of
elimination and kept asking strange questions. It was at this stage that
I burst out of the meeting.''

Dateline's videotape clearly shows that Tsvangirai did indeed leave the
meeting after some tense exchanges, but he returned after several
minutes and for the next hour discussed various post-elimination
scenarios. As Davis told GLW, ``Even if it was a sting, [Tsvangirai] was
stung''.

Is this ``evidence'' that Tsvangirai ordered the assassination of
Mugabe, as Dateline insists? Clearly, Tsvangirai is not telling the
whole truth. Tsvangirai seems to be attempting to conceal that he was
prepared to deal with military figures who he was led to believe
intended to act against Mugabe.

Tsvangirai's comments to the South African Broadcasting Corporation's
Special Assignment program on February 19 strengthen that
interpretation. He said that in the early meetings, D&M claimed they had
contacts in the Zimbabwe military, but in the meeting that was recorded,
Ben-Menashe and Legault pressed the MDC about what contacts they had
made in the military.

``I said, `No, that was not the understanding ... You were supposed to
initiate [contact] because you said you had the contacts''', Tsvangirai
explained. ``I don't think the military was aware of what was happening,
but this was the portrayal that was being given by Ben-Menashe.''

However, Tsvangirai continued to maintain in his SABC comments that the
filmed meeting was a ``broad scenario discussion''. In the discussion of
the ``scenario'' of Mugabe's assassination, Tsvangirai said: ``There is
only one ... option: the [Zimbabwe] vice-president takes over, we will
cooperate as MDC in parliament to make the necessary constitutional
changes to facilitate the extension of the voting [to] March 31st, so
that we create conditions of stability before the elections are held.''
This is broadly in line with the recordings of the meeting.

The Mugabe regime has much to gain from a successful entrapment of the
former trade union leader. Tsvangirai is a serious threat to Mugabe's
22-year reign. Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) have embarked on a reign of terror to
intimidate supporters of Tsvangirai's trade union-backed MDC in an
attempt to retain power at the March election.

The charges made in the Dateline program may provide Mugabe with the
perfect opportunity to nullify the MDC challenge to his autocratic
regime. Repressive ``anti-terrorist'' laws passed in January carry
sentences of life for acts of ``insurgency, banditry, sabotage or
terrorism''.

Zimbabwe's minister for national security Nicholas Goche told the
state-run Herald newspaper on February 15 that the allegations ``prima
facie suggest the commission of a number of very serious crimes. The
police will obviously need to conduct exhaustive investigations to get
to the bottom of the matter''.

Mugabe has resorted to similar charges in the past to neutralise his
political opponents. In 1983, Zimbabwe African Peoples Union leader
Joshua Nkomo fled the country after being accused of plotting to
overthrow the government.

Mark Davis told GLW that he had further footage from the secretly taped
meeting, but it is not scheduled to be broadcast at this stage. He
refused to release the entire tape to other journalists to examine.
``We'll wait and see what develops'', he said.

Full transcripts for Davis' February 13 and 20 programs are available at
<http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline>.

The following article appears in the latest issue of Green Left Weekly
(http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2002/482/482p13.htm), Australia's
radical newspaper.

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>From Green Left Weekly, February 27, 2002. Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page.