The World - News from May 5, 1989

Zimbabwe’s High Court has freed 15 men accused of massacring 11 white missionaries and five of their children, saying they are absolved by a presidential amnesty, newspapers in Bulawayo reported. State prosecutor Thomas Bvekerwa said the 15 men--seven dissident guerrillas and eight squatters--are protected by an April, 1988, amnesty declared by President Robert Mugabe, the Chronicle newspaper reported. It said the men could have been hanged if they were convicted of murder. The squatters had been evicted after the missionaries complained. Among those slain in the November, 1987, raid were American Pentecostal missionaries David Emerson, 35, and his fiancee, Karen Ivesdal, 31, who were from Choteau, Mont.