Due to a contentious email excerpt, the trial of Ivy Kombo and her husband Admire Kasi—who are charged with obtaining conversion certificates without writing conversion examinations—has been postponed once more.
In her testimony, Edith Mandiyanike of Fidelity Printers stated that she got an email from Huggins Duri, the former executive secretary of the Council for Legal Education, enumerating the names of students, including Kasi and Kombo, whose certificates needed to be prepared.
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The State attempted to submit the email excerpt in a second tender.
The solicitors for the trio, however, protested, claiming that it would be an injustice and that the State should have been required to establish the email’s legitimacy before admitting it as evidence.
The trial will resume on March 4 following the presiding magistrate’s decision on Thursday.
“Kombo and Kasi’s names were on a list of pupils whose certificates needed to be produced that I got in an email.
Mandiyanike stated, “I printed the certificates of the pupils on the list as per the email’s instructions.
When prosecutor Anesu Chirenje questioned Mandiyanike about alternative means of contact than email, he responded as follows:
“We used email for all correspondence, and we followed up with calls to let them know the certificates were available for pickup.”
Chirenje then sought to offer the email extract a second time, but the legal representatives of Kasi and Kombo protested.
“We are protesting the document that the State intends to use with this witness in this case.
“The court has made its decision regarding the production of that document, and it’s extremely unsettling that the State likely thinks they are the court’s cousins and that their word is final.”
“The accused individuals were not given access to the document at the start of the trial.
“The State tries to claim that they assisted us at the beginning of this case, but this document wasn’t present.
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“Chirenje claimed in a letter she addressed to us last week on February 13 that it was an attachment to a statement on Edith Mandiyanike. We were served the statement along with an annexure, which is not this email.
The attorneys said that it was unfair to the accused because they had already developed their defence strategy and cross-examined witnesses without using the aforementioned email. “He’s trying to smuggle the email into the record,” they stated.
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