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(NEWZIMBABWE) Detention caused my husband’s amputation, insists wife

Detention caused my husband’s amputation, insists wife
By Mwala Kalaluka in Mongu
Fri 15 Apr. 2011, 04:01 CAT

THE wife of the 70-year-old Mongu man whose leg has been amputated insists that detention at the hands of the police is the cause of her husband's condition. And intelligence officers have been frequenting the man’s bedside at Mongu's Lewanika Hospital male ward in a bid to establish the people behind the picture that appeared in Wednesday’s Post edition showing his amputated leg.

Reacting to Inspector General of Police Francis Kabonde's claims at a press briefing on Wednesday that former Lozi treason-accused, Mwiya Sihope's amputation had nothing to do with his detention at Lusaka Central Prison, Inonge Sihope, 54, stuck to her earlier position.

During the press briefing where he announced the dispatch of 600 police officers to Mongu to police this year's Kuomboka Ceremony of the Lozi people in the area, Kabonde accused The Post of trying to link Sihope's amputation to his detention to gain mileage by writing inflammatory stories.

Kabonde said Sihope, who is asthmatic, was also an outpatient for a long time and that the gangrene condition that led to the amputation of his right leg had nothing to do with his detention because he was released with his two legs.

But Inonge in an interview at Lewanika General Hospital yesterday afternoon said the reaction from Kabonde as published in the Zambia Daily Mail and broadcast on radios and television stations was just the government’s efforts to save its brutal face.

“How can I lie about my husband when I am the person who is closest to him and knows him better?” Inonge asked as she prepared to take food to her husband. “If he was in that condition before he was detained, they would not have arrested him in the first place.”

Inonge further wondered how asthma and gangrene were related for Kabonde to say that her husband was a known asthma patient.

Inonge said the position that she gave to The Post that the medical condition that led to her husband's amputation occurred whilst he was in detention was the correct one.

“I am not lying and this is why even the family is very angry because they knew that my husband was a smart man before he was arrested,” she said.

Inonge said people that were detained together with her husband in Lusaka attested to the same position.

“The very day he arrived from detention in Lusaka that is when his body got paralysed. I want the government to compensate me because I am looking after my husband all by myself,” she said.
Inonge also revealed that Sihope had been taken to the hospital's Intensive Care Unit on Wednesday but was taken back to the male ward yesterday morning.

“The condition is very bad. He tries to talk at times but it’s like today things are not very good,” she said.

According to hospital sources, gangrene, which is a condition that develops when the flow of blood is disturbed, was in no way connected to asthma.

The sources said there had been a sharp reaction from government agencies following the publication of Sihope's picture in The Post.

And Inonge said some people that she thought to be hospital officials had gone to Sihope's bedside immediately after his picture was published to find out the people that took the picture.

“They came to ask my husband's nephew Ngenda Mubu but he told them that there were so many people that visited Sihope and that he did not know who took the picture in question,” said Inonge.
Meanwhile, Vice-President George Kunda arrives in Mongu at 14:00 hours today to attend this year’s Kuomboka ceremony in place of President Rupiah Banda.

Labels: BAROTSE FREEDOM MOVEMENT, FRANCIS KABONDE

posted by MrK @ 2:23 PM