Sunday Mail Editor's Brother Arrested in Baba Jukwa Crackdown
Police spokesperson, Charity Charamba, said the Kudzai brothers had colluded in the running of the Baba Jukwa Facebook page that incited Zimbabweans to revolt in the event Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections.
WASHINGTON DC — Police have arrested the brother of Baba Jukwa-accused and Sunday Mail editor, Edmund Kudzai, and charged him with subversion and insurgency. Philip Tawanda Kudzai joined his young brother, Edmund, behind bars on Tuesday after handing himself in. Police spokesperson, Charity Charamba, said the two had colluded in the running of the Baba Jukwa Facebook page that urged a revolt in the event Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections. "Phillip Tawanda Kudzai is responsible for administering the Baba Jukwa page together with his brother Edmund Kudzai and other accomplices who are still at large," Charamba said. "He is being charged for subverting a constitutional government as defined by Section 22 (2) (a) (i) of the Criminal Codification and Reform Act, or alternatively attempting to commit an act of insurgency." Police say they are still pursuing more suspects. Edmund, who worked for Zanu PF as a media and promotional consultant ahead of the elections, was arrested last week and charged with terrorism, insurgency and undermining the person of the President, among other charges. He denies he is Baba Jukwa, and is seeking release at the High Court after his bail bid was turned down by a Harare magistrate. Edmund, a software developer, worked with the military in efforts to unmask the mysterious character who won acclaim by rattling Zanu PF with sensitive and embarrassing leaks ahead of the vote. In an affidavit deposited with the police, the Sunday Mail editor gives a blow-by-blow account of how he was roped in by the military to lead a cyber-hunt for Baba Jukwa and his collaborators. He also reveals the dilemma that he found himself entangled in as the military and the police jockeyed for exclusive access to Baba Jukwa's email account after he hacked into it. "The MoD (Ministry of Defense) was interested in the identities of local collaborators and requested that I carry out forensic work on the email account to find out the real identities of anonymous email accounts that had been in communication," he wrote in an affidavit deposited with the police. "The process took about a week and identified about a dozen local collaborators through header data analysis. The information was passed on to the MoD as well as the entire digital data cache." However, police insist the Kudzai brothers were the real Baba Jukwa, charging that the character's email was attached to an Econet line registered in Phillip's name. But Edmund has an explanation for that; he says after hacking the email, he had to put his own details - including the phone number - for recovery purposes. "I immediately changed the password to the email account, the account recovery phone number and the account recovery email address to my personal and alias (Mai Jukwa) details," he said.