Over Hundreds of Zimbabwean lawyers seized the road  Yesterday to demand justice for people detained in jail and others facing fast-track trials after violent protests this month led to mass arrests and a brutal security crackdown.

Police say more than 1,000 persons have been nabbed since Jan. 14, when a three-day stay-at-home strike called after President Emmerson Mnangagwa raised fuel prices led to street violence and looting. Those arrested have been denied bail in a pattern lawyers say is a violation of their rights.

Pressure group Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human rights (ZLHR) says the arrests and detentions, most for public order offences, have exceeded the legal system’s capacity. Lawyers have been unable to extend representation to several hundred detainees including children.

ZLHR said that close to 50 persons have been acquitted on charges of public violence while an equal number have been found guilty and sentence to as much as seven years, since they did not have lawyers.

It would be recalled that Mnangagwa last week pledged to investigate the security crackdown, during which residents and other witnesses say police and soldiers conducted night-time raids on many homes and forcibly removed and beat alleged protesters.

The President on Monday said he had ordered the arrest of a soldier and police officer filmed assaulting a man in handcuffs.

The opposition has, however, cast doubt on the president’s promises, saying no one has yet been brought to account for the death of six people shot by the military after post-election violence last August.

Rights groups say at least 12 people were killed during this month’s unrest while police put the figure at three.

On Tuesday, some of the lawyers were seen marching through Harare carried placards emblazoned with the words: “Systemic beatings, detentions silence the rule of law” while another sign read “#No to judicial capture, #justice not politics; #no to militarization of magistracy”.

They walked from the Law Society of Zimbabwe offices to the Constitutional Court, where they presented a petition while riot police watched on.