Henrietta Rushwaya Wants Her Gold Bars Back
Henrietta Rushwaya says she wants her 6kgs of purified gold back as she had no intention of smuggling it.
The gold, worth about US$333 000 is being kept at Fidelity Printers and Refiners pending Rushwaya’s trial.
Through her lawyer Tapson Dzvetero, Rushwaya told a magistrate that she had no knowledge that the bag she carried to the airport had gold in it.
Rushwaya maintained that she took the handbag with gold believing that it contained her clothes, foodstuffs and other personal belongings.
Rushwaya said she does not dispute that at her house she had and was in possession of the gold, as she is a fully-fledged miner in her own right, but the allegation that she intended to smuggle it.
Rushwaya said this in her submissions during bail application heard before Harare regional magistrate Ngoni Nduna. Dzvetero said:
The accused person (Rushwaya) denies all the charges. She denies she ever had an intention to smuggle gold outside the country. The accused asserted this aspect on the day of her arrest to the arresting detail, Bruno Chiketo.
She had no knowledge that the bag she had carried contained gold and that she was of the mistaken belief that the bag contained her clothes, foodstuffs and other personal belongings.
She states that she could not have been naive to bring gold through an airport which she fully knows has scientific detectors.
… It is common cause that the gold is secured at Fidelity Printers and Refiners and it is submitted that the gold itself is in itself security to Rushwaya that when she is acquitted of the State ailing case, she is entitled to recover her value of US$333 000.
Rushwaya was arrested on 26 October at the Robert Gabriel International Airport after security officers detected gold in her handbag.
She has however alleged that the issue is now being used to score cheap political points.
