Kasambara, others bail bid ruling set for March 14

The Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal will on March 14 deliver  its ruling on a bail application pending appeal filed by former minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Ralph Kasambara and his two co-convicts.

Registrar for the High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal, Agness Patemba has confirmed about the set date.

Patemba said Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Dunstan Mwaungulu, sitting as a single Supreme Court Judge, would deliver his ruling on the matter “on March 14 2018”.

Kasambara and his co-convicts—Pika Manondo and McDonald Kumwembe—applied for bail pending an appeal against their conviction in March this year.

Justice Mwaungulu heard last year submissions from Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Mary Kachale and lawyers for the trio, namely Modecai Msisha, Senior Counsel (SC), Michael Goba Chipeta and Lusungu Gondwe.

The applicants , through their lawyers, submitted that they deserved bail because they complied with their bail conditions before conviction and that their passports as well as bail bonds were still in custody of the State.

They also argued that the call logs used as concrete evidence in convicting them were not relevant enough as the time frame of the logs could not constitute a conspiracy hence errors were made.

But in her submissions, Kachale accused the applicants of deliberately misrepresenting the facts as the call logs were a balanced up mixture and a totality of evidence rendered to the courts.

The trio was convicted in 2016 after being found guilty of conspiracy and attempt to murder former Ministry of Finance budget director Paul Mphwiyo outside the gate of his Area 43 residence in Lilongwe on September 13 2013.

It is widely believed that Mphwiyo’s shooting exposed the plunder of public resources at Capital Hill that later came to be known as Cashgate

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