The government has reportedly deployed Israeli spying technology for use by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to ferret citizens’ calls and messages.
Zimbabwe is one of the 25 countries in the world using the spyware developed by Israeli technology company Circles to spy on citizens.
Intelligence sources told The NewsHawks this week that the CIO used the technology to record Vice-President Kembo Mohadi’s calls and messages with several women, some of them married aides. A source was quoted as saying:
Mohadi was recorded by CIO. Our intelligence services, especially CIO and military intelligence, have the technological capabilities to record calls, messages, snoop emails and locate people through their smartphones.
The technology came from Israeli and China, but the Israeli one is far superior, effective and deadlier.
Intelligence services in Zimbabwe record almost everyone, including those around the President.
Remember the First Lady (Auxillia Mnangagwa)’s angry call outburst with Murombo (Colonel Samson Murombo was Commander of 1 Presidential Guard Infantry Battalion based at Josiah Magama Tongogara Barracks, formerly KGVI Barracks) in Harare, which is responsible for securing the President and State House).
Mohadi was recorded by CIO and the recordings were circulated to our bosses internally and then leaked to the media.
The President (Emmerson Mnangagwa) and CIO director-general (Isaac Moyo) were fully aware of the recordings.
Moyo got the recordings from his technical team and shared them with Mnangagwa. The leaks were later done by CIO analysts for political reasons; to expose and stop Mohadi from brazen abuse of office and embarrassing the government. The idea was not to remove him from office but to contain him.
That is why Mnangagwa didn’t force him out even if he could have done so. The best way to contain Mohadi was to expose and stop him.
Some people close to him had previously raised these issues with him before all this, but he didn’t listen.
So CIO went all out to stop him through this operation by leaking the recordings strategically (there are actually many of them), especially because one of their officers was involved; married women and young girls were also entangled in it.
So in short, this was a CIO operation to stop the marauding Vice-President, who was acting like a bull in a China shop, from abusing office and tarnishing the image of government, but political vultures were already circling over his potential political carcass, which was an unintended consequence.
The predators or vultures still see an opportunity.