Not one skerrick of substantial evidence has been produced to support this allegation. The government’s whole case rests on the evidence of a so-called former Israeli intelligence agent called Ari Ben-Menashe. I and many other people know that Ben-Menashe is a liar and a fraud.

In March 2002 Tsvangirai managed to poll 42% of the vote in the Zimbabwe presidential election, despite blatant poll-rigging and intimidation by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. All election observers agree that in a fair election Tsvangirai would have defeated Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe to bankruptcy and isolation and its people to starvation.

Mugabe is desperate to discredit and if possible to destroy Tsvangirai. So he hired a Canadian "public relations" company run by Ari Ben-Menashe, for a fee of US$1 million, to lead Tsvangirai into a trap which would give the government a pretext to put him on trial.

Ben-Menashe contacted Tsvangirai and offered him the services of his company. He did not tell him that he had already been hired by Mugabe. A meeting in Montreal between Ben-Menashe and Tsvangirai was videotaped without Tsvangirai’s knowledge. In a virtually inaudible video of very bad quality, Ben-Menashe tells Tsvangirai about plans to "eliminate Mugabe."

Tsvangirai says that Ben-Menashe invited him to the meeting to discuss political fundraising, but after references by Ben-Menashe to "eliminating Mugabe," Tsvangirai realised he was being set up and stormed out of the meeting. On the basis of this flimsy "evidence," Tsvangirai and several other MDC members are charged with treason, a charge which carries the death penalty.

So who is Ari Ben-Menashe? I have been following this man’s ‘career’ for many years. I have described him as a luftmensch (Yiddish for "airman"), a character reminiscent of Woody Allen’s character Zelig. Ben-Menashe claims to be a former senior Israeli intelligence officer. This is a lie. I have documents that show that, in the 1980s, he was a low-level translator for the Israeli Defence Force. He claims to have been deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s. This is also a lie. When he applied for asylum in Australia, he claimed that he faced persecution in Israel. This is complete fiction.

Ben-Menashe has also falsely claimed that he commanded the Israeli raid to free hijacked airline passengers at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976, and that he infiltrated the French-built Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak that Israel successfully destroyed in 1981. These claims are absurd fantasies.

After leaving Israel, and unable to get residency in Australia, Ben-Menashe settled in Canada, where he embarked on a career as a con-man, specialising in defrauding governments in Third World countries. He swindled the Zambian government into paying him US$7 million for a shipment of grain that he never produced, and has been involved in fraudulent cases in Canada, the Czech Republic and Ghana.

During his sojourn in Australia in the 1980s, Ben-Menashe was initially taken seriously by many journalists who eventually concluded that he was a fake. He claimed that the Israeli government paid almost US$9 million in bribes to Australian politicians to assist in channelling weapons to Iran. He has been branded "a notorious, chronic liar," by the Jerusalem Post.

Following Ben-Menashe’s claims that he had been deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan Administration, the US Congress organised an investigation, which concluded that Ben-Menashe was a "career liar" and "totally lacking in credibility."

George Bizos, the eminent South African lawyer who is defending Tsvangirai, who also defended Nelson Mandela in 1963 and is credited with saving Mandela from execution, has been fully informed of Ben-Menashe’s tainted past. Ben-Menashe, unused to tough cross-examination, has emerged as more erratic by the day.

As someone with a long-standing interest in this case, and as a human rights campaigner in federal parliament since my election, I have offered to assist Tsvangirai’s defence by demonstrating that no trust can be placed in anything Ben-Menashe says. Given Ari Ben-Menashe’s total lack of credibility, it is unfortunate that he has been given so much coverage in the Australian media. It is doubly unfortunate that the videotape produced by Ben-Menashe, which is the sole piece of "evidence" against Tsvangirai, was first released on SBS’s Dateline program on February 13, 2002, in a report by Mark Davis, recently promoted to compere of the show.

Some months before the SBS broadcast used by Mugabe to frame the Zimbabwean opposition leader, SBS asked me to comment on Ben-Menashe, and I set out for them the facts I have given in this article. But nearly everything I said was cut out of the program as it was broadcast. I can only presume that this is because my exposure of Ben-Menashe spoiled their "exclusive" story. SBS chose to ignore the facts about Ben-Menashe, and instead lent itself to this shameful campaign by a notorious dictator to smear the opposition presidential candidate. Not surprisingly, Tsvangirai is suing SBS for defamation.

The result of this ill-advised broadcast by SBS has been to throw suspicion on Tsvangirai, when the spotlight of international condemnation should be on the dictator Mugabe and his paid fabricator, Ari Ben-Menashe. A national broadcaster of SBS’s standing should know better, and they will owe Morgan Tsvangirai and the people of Zimbabwe an apology when, as I hope, this affair ends in Tsvangirai’s vindication.