Court shields HRDC trio

Three former HRDC leaders have been given a temporary lifeline, putting their looming arrest on hold as they race to convince the court to quash the warrants against them.

The Lilongwe Chief Resident Magistrate’s Court has suspended the enforcement of arrest warrants against former Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) leaders Timothy Mtambo, Gift Trapence and Macdonald Sembereka pending a hearing of their application.

Chief Resident Magistrate Austin Banda ordered the suspension and scheduled a hearing of the trio’s application to stop the warrants for October 21 at 2pm.

Lawyer Khwima Mchizi, representing the three former HRDC leaders, asked the court to suspend the warrants, arguing that the case in which the State accused them of violating bail conditions ended on October 1, 2020.

The State, however, asked the court to defer hearing the application to give the prosecution an opportunity to respond to the trio’s request to quash the arrest warrants.