A senior military officer may have helped the two kingpins of the G40 faction of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Jonathan Moyo and Saviour Kasukuwere to escape.
According to Moyo 25 SAS snipers fired for 15 minutes at Kasukuwere’s house where he and Kasukuwere, their wives and seven children were.
“What would you do if you & your family survived a 2am-15 minute ZDF attack on your house with 7 children one of them 12 years old, by 25 SAS snippers with semi automatic weapons; randomly firing tracer bullets & stun grenades? Is this the New Justice? New Dawn? New Era? New Zim?” Moyo tweeted on 28 November.
Moyo also posted a 28 second video about the alleged shooting on 13 January with the tweet: “The Harare Junta has lied to Zimbabweans, Sadc, AU & UN that there was no coup on 15/11/17. There was a bloody coup with killings, widespread torture, illegal arrests & detentions. Here’s CCTV clip 👇🏿 of start of Army attack on SK, me & our families at @Hon_Kasukuwere’s home!”
He told the British Broadcasting Corporation programme Hardtalk on 11 January that he was warned not to sleep at his house on the night of 14 November so when 15 to 25 SAS soldiers attacked his residence he and his family were no there.
Asked whether he went to hide at Mugabe’s private residence as some reports said, Moyo said this was not true.
“I am glad that the military people who wanted to harm me on the night of the coup don’t actually know what happened and they have been peddling falsehoods about the circumstances.
“What I would say without putting into jeopardy many of God’s people who were very kind to give me assistance is that it is true that I took my family with me on the night of the 14th of November to my colleagues’ residence, my colleague being Saviour Kasukuwere who was then Minister of Local Government and the amazing fact is that his house was also attacked at the same time when my house was being attacked….”
Asked by Hardtalk presenter Zeinad Badawi how he and Kasukuwere managed to escape since they were the most wanted by the military, Moyo said that there was some 15 minutes of gunfire. The house was surrounded, but amazingly after those 15 minutes, the gunfire stopped.
“We waited for 10 minutes. We then managed to get out of the house and were amazed they were no longer there,” Moyo said.
Asked how he left Zimbabwe, Moyo said: “I left Zimbabwe with the help of people who to me are angels, because they saved lives, and I am not liberty to say who helped me, how they helped me and how I left Zimbabwe except to say I left Zimbabwe when President Mugabe was the president of the country and I left with the assistance of these people legally, I left the country legally. I managed to escape the net of the military people and to be where I am legally.”
But some of Moyo’s twitter followers did not buy the story.
One said if Moyo had time to count 15 minutes then it was not an attack.
Another said: “Plus Moyo anonyepa ma sniper ekupi anopotsa munhu anemusoro muhombe wakadaro?”
A third said if this was really a military operation, only four snipers, not 25, would have been enough and no one would have escaped.
On the grainy video evidence Moyo posted on 13 January, one follower commented: “that video evidence kinda lacks Ummm evidence. You might need to see a psychiatrist to help you move on”.
Another questioned: “What are we watching there? Am I the only asina chaaona?”
The response was: “Atora clip from a charlie chaplin film uyo.”
A source, however, said Moyo and Kasukuwere were helped to escape by a very senior military official who remains in the defence forces because he is helping with information.
The source claimed that the attacks on both Jonathan Moyo’s house and that of Saviour Kasukuwere were stage-managed to allow them to escape. – Insider