Zimbabwe judge releases jailed activists after ruling police falsified evidence News
Zimbabwe judge releases jailed activists after ruling police falsified evidence

[JURIST] A Zimbabwean judge has released 13 opposition activists held by the government because police faked evidence against them, defense lawyers said Thursday. All 13 belong to the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change [party website], and had been held since March when the government arrested [JURIST report] at least 100 people – including opposition presidential hopeful Morgan Tsvangirai [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] – in advance of a prayer meeting in the nation's capital. High Court Judge Lawrence Kamocha released the 13 on Wednesday after ruling that key police evidence, including supposed terrorist training locations and identities of key witnesses, were falsified.

Political tensions have run high in Zimbabwe [JURIST news archive] recently, especially since President Robert Mugabe [JURIST news archive] announced in December that he planned to extend his presidency from 2008 to 2010 to correspond with parliamentary elections. Also Wednesday, more than 150 members of the activist party National Constitutional Assembly [party website] were arrested [SW Radio Africa report] outside Parliament while rallying for constitutional reform. In February, police imposed a three-month ban [JURIST report] on anti-government protests after a political rally by the Movement for Democratic Change led to confrontations between police and citizen around the country. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.