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full screenZimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Archive image. Photo: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP/TT
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has pardoned over 4,000 prisoners as part of the country’s 44-year independence celebrations.
The amnesty concerns female prisoners who have served a third of their sentence. Prisoners over the age of 60 who had served one-tenth of the imposed sentence were also pardoned, as were some young prisoners.
A number of prisoners once sentenced to death had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
Through the amnesty, President Emmerson Mnangagwa honors the freedom struggle when Zimbabwe in 19080 managed to free itself from a racist minority rule that oppressed the black majority after a long armed conflict. The former Rhodesia then changed its name to Zimbabwe.
After continued internal unrest, Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF party managed to secure near-totalitarian and often brutal power which he maintained with an iron fist until 2017 when he was overthrown by the military.
The current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who implemented a similar amnesty a year ago, also belongs to the Zanu-PF party.