Harare - A Zimbabwean soldier has been sent to jail for an effective 12 years for breaking into a military armoury and stealing 20 automatic rifles, the state-controlled Sunday Mail said.
It quoted police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka as saying that Stanley Marange had been sentenced for theft and possession of dangerous weapons by a Harare magistrate on Friday.
Three other soldiers were to face a court martial, the spokesman said. The stolen weapons were recovered at the four soldiers homes, he added.
Meanwhile, a 76-year-old German Jesuit priest assaulted by soldiers last week has given a detailed account of how he was punched, kicked and thrown into a muddy puddle.
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'They dragged me out of the car and pushed me into a large puddle' Reverend Wolfgang Thamm was quoted in the independent Standard newspaper Sunday as saying that he was on his way to collect a sick parishioner in the Banket district 80 kilometres west of Harare when he was forced to stop by soldiers at the gates of a military barracks he was passing.
"One of them took off my glasses and hit me in the right eye," said Thamm, who was wearing his clerical collar at the time. "They dragged me out of the car and pushed me into a large puddle. One of them hit me hard," and others took turns to assault him, he said.
The German embassy last week lodged a diplomatic protest with the Harare government. Police denied knowledge of the attack.
Violent treatment of civilians by soldiers, police and state intelligence agents as well as torture and harassment of political activists is one of the major stumbling blocks in the implementation of a power-sharing agreement between 85-year-old President Robert Mugabe and pro-democracy leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Prime Minister Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says Mugabe has refused since the coalition government was inaugurated in February to carry out obligations to introduce democratic reforms, including the retraining and reorientation of the pro-Mugabe security forces.
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