When Justice Chinembiri Bhunu presiding over the terrorism and insurgency trial of MDC-T treasurer Roy Bennett ruled that the State could rely on highly unsafe e-mails evidence to put the accused on his defense, we opined that the ruling had hanged the AG in the open to dry.
Obviously Attorney General Johannes Tomana has limited if not nonexistent knowledge about technology behind transmission and receipt of e-mails.
If he had an expected general idea or the humility to seek advice from genuine IT experts other than those in the CIO who were offered jobs on political patronage considerations he would not have called Mr. Perekayi Denshad Mutsetse to testify as an IT expert in a matter that carries the capital punishment of death should the accused be convicted.
During interviews with Mr. Mutsetse the AG would have established that Mr. Mutsetse was an IT expert impostor not worthy of his trust in a high stakes trial like the Bennett trial.
But because an ignorant AG was compelled to authenticate disputed IT evidence he unwittingly believes forms the basis of the State case against the accused he had to find an expert to testify in the matter without knowing the specifications of the type of expertise required.
It turned out that he banked his trust in an under qualified IT ignoramus Perekayi Denshad Mutsetse who has done the frivolous and vexatious State persecution case more harm than good and must have left Justice Chinembiri Bhunu aghast in confusion.
After ruling against the use of the AG’s name on fake but illustrative cross examination e-mails created by the defense to show that anyone anywhere could create e-mail communication in another person’s name –which was rather odd as the defense wanted to drive home the point that not even the AG was immune to that kind of impersonation, the streetwise defense team was not unduly daunted as it went on to produce other fake e-mails with equally devastating and embarrassing effect on the shaky state case.
If there was any doubt over the averments of the defense that e-mails were an unsafe source of evidence upon which the case must proceed, the court must by now be better informed as to why the defense holds that contention and its legitimacy.
Africom Mutare’s Mr. Perekayi Denshad Mutsetse called upon by the state to testify as a computer network expert witness made a complete fool of himself in the witness stand when he in his now questionable expertise told the court that it was not possible for one to access another person’s e-mail without a password.
Any computer technology expert worth of recognition as such would know that it is possible to hack into other computers and or view any information on another computer without a password.
There are world acclaimed cases where computer hackers have broken into sophisticated national networks of the USA’s NASA computer network and downloaded classified national security information that any person purporting expertise in computer networking should be at the very least expected to be familiar with.
Closer to home the government has legislated to pry into private communication through the Information Communication Interception Act that the CIO uses to monitor communications between unsuspecting members of the public in its generality and being a networking expert Mutsetse should have known that his assertion that e-mails cannot be accessed without a password was blatantly false and unsustainable.
Now that he has falsely declared that it’s not possible from his diminished expertise the court must weigh his credibility as an expert when he further asserted that the e-mail printouts between Hitschmann and Bennett were genuine without even having examined the source computer from which they were obtained and sent.
No wonder lead defense counsel Ms Beatrice Mtetwa had a field day with the pseudo IT expert called upon by the State to authenticate its dubious evidence against the accused.
First she produced copies of his Network Essentials attained in December 2000 from the Secretarial Skills Development Centre in Harare and another one for Microcomputer Technology (City and Guilds Certificate) attained in 2002 which were not disputed.
Then she produced damming evidence that the so called expert State witness had in fact been employed by TelOne between 1996 and 1999 as a General Hand and not as a Technician as he had claimed.
She adduced evidence of the Witness’ CV showing he had failed his “O” Levels and an organogram of Africom showing that the State’s expert witness occupied a lowly position in the organization that is not commensurate with his claim to IT expertise.
The organogram showed that the witness was not employed as a Provincial Engineer, a position that does not exist at Africom but rather as a mere Technician.
She further accused the so called expert witness of attempting to mislead the court about his level of expertise by claiming to have been certified by the University of Zimbabwe and Africa University falsely and without evidence of such certification.
On the evidence of the State expert witness that evidence of hard copy e-mail correspondence he was shown by the Police was genuine and authentic correspondence that took place between Hitschmann and Bennett the defense printed fake evidence of e-mails it had created in the witness’ name and he authenticated them as genuine.
When his mistake became apparent he could not hold his composure and threw tantrums
that earned him several cautions from the presiding Judge to remain focused and answer the questions from the defense counsel.
But the expert witness had been so torn apart that he made some startling and damaging revelations about himself.
He admitted he had absolutely no knowledge about e-mail and computer forensic examinations to establish e-mail correspondence authenticity which he believed could only be carried in South Africa and other unspecified countries.
He further categorically stated that in Zimbabwe there were no computer hackers when the entire nation knows that the CIO can legally hack into any private correspondence.
And his assertion that even though he had authenticated a fake e-mail produced by the defense he was not mistaken about the Hitschmann and Bennett correspondence authenticity because nobody could backdate e-mail correspondence became a source of huge embarrassment for the State case when the defense quickly produced another backdated e-mail for his perusal.
A distraught Mutsetse failed to dismiss evidence of his low level employment capacity within Africom pleading breach of company secrecy if he did so which is completely outrageous.
On his lowly qualifications he could only claim that in other countries which he did not specify his qualifications were equivalent to a degree.
He then changed his claim that he had worked for TelOne as a technician between 1996 and 1999 to having worked for the same company as a technician for four years on a contract basis.
If the AG had known about all these deficiencies in Mr. Mutsetse’s expertise or more appropriately if the AG was himself computer literate he would not have entrusted the State case in the hands of such an incompetent “expert”.
Simply put Mr. Mutsetse is under qualified for the task he was brought to court to clarify and his evidence has all but left the court in the dilemma of determining a crucial matter on the basis of evidence the authenticity of which is in doubt.
An IT expert who claims in court that “information technology forensics was not done here in Zimbabwe adding that maybe it existed in South Africa and other countries,” as did the witness is not worth paying attention to and worse when his claims to qualifications and experience are proven to be fallacious to the extent they were in this matter.
The trial will obviously continue but as we said it is doing the credibility of the AG serious harm he could have been sparred when it became apparent that the case was formulated on evidence extracted through torture.
No comments:
Post a Comment