In this audio, one of Obvious Mwaliteta’s lawyers Keith Mweemba says his client did not deserve to be in prison.

And UPND vice-president Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba says the party has been vindicated.

Speaking to journalists shortly after Mwaliteta, Evans Mukobela, Macmillan Shimukonka, Laswell Phiri, and Emmanuel Mumbi were found with no case to answer in a case in which they were charged with aggravated robbery, Mweemba said people should never be incarcerated on mere suspicion.

“This is a landmark ruling and all I can say is that this is not a case that should have been brought to court in the first place. These people, the accused who have been acquitted have spent a very long time in custody on an offense which they did not commit and it just goes to show how the innocent people, incarcerated for such a long time at a time when it was an election time and people had gone there to monitor elections, it was a time of elections, and everybody knows that when you talk about elections, they are connected to democracy, people have got freedom of movement in this country, they are protected by the Constitution so I do not see why people should be arrested and incarcerated just from mere suspicion that they have been found at the scene. First of all, they were not even at the scene of crime, they were at ECZ, ECZ if you heard from the judge was not even the scene of crime. So, we are at a loss as to why people were arrested and incarcerated for a long period of time. But at the end of the day, justice has been done, they didn’t deserve to be in prison,” said Mweemba.

Take a listen:

And GBM said the UPND had been vindicated.

“Justice has prevailed, I am sure even all the other cases, they will fall in a similar manner because we know that we are innocent. I don’t want to say so much on the incarceration of our president and the case which is before the court so let us wait and see what the court will have to say on the 14th,” said GBM.

Mwaliteta and others were arrested on August 19, 2016.