Harare magistrate Mrs Vongai Guwuriro has deferred the trial of Tendai Biti to January 11 and 12 next year for continuation.
Biti is facing charges of assaulting businesswoman and investor Mrs Tatiana Aleshina at the Harare magistrate court in 2020. The lawyer is still submitting his defence which he started three months ago. Biti is denying the offence that he verbally assaulted the complainant saying that referring to her as stupid was a jest.
He told the court that he did not repeat the word stupid as alleged by three witnesses saying it was exaggerated. Biti told the court that on November 30, where he is alleged to have verbally assaulted the complainant, he had no supporters that were following him. He said the testimony by witnesses had inconsistencies in that the incident happened inside or outside the courtroom.
Deputy prosecutor general Mr Michael Reza is on record asking Mrs Guwuriro to guide Biti on his submissions so that he will not repeat what he had submitted before.
Biti had repeated the same applications on several occasions. He filed for recusal of the prosecutor on more than two occasions, recusal of the magistrate more than twice, application for referral to the Constitutional Court on more than three occasions and several applications for postponement of the matter.
Mr Reza on several occasions had accused Biti of deliberately delaying the trial by filing several court applications. He accused Biti of submitting irrelevant information which has nothing to do with the assault case.
Source – The Herald
