Mugabe's Blood Diamonds Panorama

Tonight on Panorama, would you buy a diamond from Zimbabwe?

TRANSLATION: It's like selling dripping blood.

In the diamond fields we hear evidence of torture camps. The dogs

were biting him. One of his ears was torn off.

We ask, will President Mugabe be prosecuted for these crimes? Is the

international community turning a blind eye to these atrocities?

says we are taking care of human rights abuses. We are stopping the

flow of diamond, and human right Out of the bowels of the earth come

these wonders - diamonds, symbolising pur ritty. People spend

billions of them each year and buying a diamond can have an impact

far beyond the ring on your finger. Diamonds have a potential to do

unbelievably good things. There is a reason God scattered them among

the poorest people of the world and the richest people in the world buy

them. This natural blessing of riches, some call it a curse.

Diamonds in the Marange area were created 1.1 billion years ago. It

is a miss fortune in history that they were just discovered now.

What's the real story behind these This town on the west coast of

India is the gate way of the world's diamond industry. It is

literally an epicentre, because almost all of the world's diamonds

are here to be cut and polished. We are here on the trail of the most

controversial diamonds in the world today. It is one of the few places

in the world where you can find blood diamonds. Two legal shipments

came through here. Otherwise they have been banned from world markets

since 209 because of allegations of human -- 2009 because of

allegations of human rights abuses. The world is running out of

diamonds N the last 20 years we have not found a significant new

deposit. Diamonds are rarer and rarer. Then all of a sudden

Zimbabwe, Marange came in. The most significant find for many, many

years. If the ban is lifted Marange diamonds could represent one-fifth

of world diamond production. Now, through the EU, Britain is helping

to push for the sales ban to be partially lifted and Marange

diamonds could end up on your high street. There's a reason why

Marange diamonds were banned for so long, the disturbing allegations

surrounding them lay far off in Zimbabwe.

Well, we are thousands of miles away from India's diamond polishing

centres now. We are in Mozambique and we are heading towards

Zimbabwe's border region, just down there, where the diamonds are

actually produced. On the other side of the mountains lies

Zimbabwe's diamond fields. This is the area known as Marange. An

extraordinary 26-squarekms saturated with gems. Miners dig for

diamonds. There are several full- scale mining areas too. Now the

area is tightly sealed off by police and soldiers. We sent

undercover cameras in to look for witnesses to violence. Police

stopped them. They got through. Their goal - to find locals brave

enough to come and meet us. Reports have been seeping out of

the area of abuses and killings, and for monthsvy been investigating

those reports and crucially a reported massacre of civilians that

took place there in 2008. Back in late 2008, people had

flocked to the diamond fields from all over. Teachers, drivers,

parents were toiling to find a way to feed their families. Here, in

one of the world's poorest countries, billions of dollars

worth of gems were tantalising. Then, one day, the military

launched an operation to clear the diamond fields.

We were moving towards a rendezvous point to meet the witnesses. We

could work discretely in these border hills. This is the first

batch coming over now. They are scared to be identified. This, at

least, is a quiet place where we can talk. It was a Thursday back in

208. One man was quietly digging for diamonds with his twin brother.

He had no job and children to feed. TRANSLATION: Suddenly military

trucks arrived and surrounded the fields. There were different sound.

What I clearly remember is the sound of guns and grenades. When my

brother was running he was shot in the back and died instantly.

firing came from all directions. You can see one soldier here moving

in. In this, one of the only existing snapshots. Out of sight

were around 1500 more soldiers. TRANSLATION: We were shocked when

we saw the soldiers. The three of us, all friends, got

up and ran in different directions. My first friend was shot in his

stomach. The second was shot in the knee. A bullet went through my

genitals. We were all running with our backs to the soldiers.

We spent time with many more witnesses. They told us how

soldiers fired down on them from helicopters.

The intense attacks went on for three weeks. They left the deepest

of scars. It wasn't just the guns. This woman had been selling clothes

to other diggers. Then her life changed.

TRANSLATION: What I can remember is being dragged into the bush by one

soldier. He then raped me. I could hear other people screaming and

crying - female voices. It meant they were being raped, like me.

The badly injured were being finished off by soldiers.

This was an atrocity, all for the sake of diamonds.

Our secret cameras got into the local hospital, where some of the

injured were taken. We have copied documents from here.

We've built up a huge body of evidence on the mass kaer.

-- on the massacre. We have 53 written testimonys, in addition to

the testimonys of the people we have spoken to ourselves. We have

smuggled and compiled these hospital records. There were over

250 entries. It is basically page after page of dog bites, rape,

beatings and killings. We re- organised the documents into date

order. The gunshot wounds clearly showed up in the period of the

operation and the disturbing pattern emerged. The wounds were

strikingly similar. Many victims told us they were forbidden from

getting medical help. Now the victims who were there were

illegally panning. They should not have been there. This wasn't just a

legitimate policing operation to flush them out, no. It was a full-

scale military operation against civilians. Our evidence clearly

shows that its aim was to maim and kill.

It was called Operation You Shall Never Return. What were the orders,

and who gave them? To find out, we travelled to

neighbouring South Africa. We've come here to Johannesburg,

where millions of Zimbabweans have taken refuge from the Troubles of

their country. Some were involved in the operation. We are here to

see if we can track down some of the perpetrators.

We are the first ones to piece together full details of the

military operation. These former soldiers and policemen took place

in it. They've never talked publicly before, but agreed to meet

us just outside Johannesburg. All of them were plagued with guilt.

This man was an officer in Zimbabwe's army. He said the

operation had a specific military goal - to surround the diggers and

trap them. TRANSLATION: The first thing we did was to close all the

supply routes. We then stationed armoured cars and deployed an

infantry battalion who dug pits from where they could fire their

light weapons. We then set up booby traps.

At the end there was no way out. The soldiers started to fire live

ammunition, killing people instantly.

The massacre was the culmination of violent security sweeps. This was a

military takeover of Zimbabwe's astounding new treasure trove. This

man was with the paramilitary police unit, known in Zimbabwe as

the Black Boots. He was stationed in the inner ring around the

diggers. He would not let us show his face. REPORTER: Did you show

The soldiers had encircled not a handful, but many thousands of

civilians. A makeshift town full of people. TRANSLATION: Women and

children had come to sell food, clothes, even water so that the

panners could bathe. All of them were caught up in the operation.

They were also killed. Our cameras went deeper inside the diamond

fields. Covertly they got into these - the premises of a key

company set up a year after the killings. Now it mines diamonds on

a large scale, here in the richest part of Marange. For President

Mugabe, faced with an economy in ruins the diamonds are a miracle.

The company is run by one of his close friends. The military and

police mine much of the rest of the diamond fields themselves. Diamond

profits, insiders told us, were the whole point of the military

So, how many were killed for the diamonds? We travelled around the

edge of Zimbabwe's borders to the banks of a river in South Africa.

We were here to get records. We had deployed our undercover team

to this mortuary back in the diamond area inside Zimbabwe to

find a book we knew was in this room. It catalogued the dead. At

night, they hand copied the pages and smuggled them out.

We've been planning this rendezvous for weeks. The documents we are

after have passed through the hands of various people who have been

working for us. Now one of our key contacts has driven through the

night to get them to us. Zimbabwe's Government has acknowledged there

was an operation to clear illegal miners out. It says, no-one was

killed by the security forces during the operation. And that

reports of many deaths are These documents show clearly that

bodies were coming in in large numbers during the three weeks of

the killings. Each body was given a burial order number. It is

extraordinary, but all of this was documented in meticulous detail. We

have it, hard evidence of large- scale killings. More than 80 bodies

were brought into this mortuary during three weeks at the end of

2008. This means - brought him dead. Many of them stated, from the

Marange diamond fields. Most of the dead were unnamed, which is highly

irregular. We located a mass grave, here at the cemetery near the

diamond fields. A man who prepared the bodies for burial told us more

than 100 bodies lay in two deep holes amongst the gravestones. One

of our team went to the cemetery to make a worker who witnessed the

burials. The details are disturbing. TRANSLATION: The body parts were

broken. It was possible to pack them. They were packed in black

plastic bags. You could see the bones piercing through the plastic.

Blood was dripping everywhere. It was disgusting.

We log reports of several other mass graves in the area from single

witnesses. Separately, numerous people told us they had seen

clusters of bodies left out in the fields or in shallow graves. 20-30

people would die every day. I'm talking about the ones I saw with

my own eyes. It was very shocking and disturbing. After seeing it all,

you could not sleep. These events We do not know the exact number who

died, but for our Research, it is We have come here to The Hague to

bring our evidence to the chief prosecutor of the International

Criminal Court. That's the organisation that's meant to

Is there anyway this military operation could have happened

without it being commanded from the very top, Robert Mugabe?

TRANSLATION: Without orders from the top, this operation would not

have been possible. President Robert Mugabe has overall

responsibility for Zimbabwe's military. We have tested me that

this general, next in command, travelled to the area at the time

of the killings, and that the helicopters used were deployed from

the air base of this air marshal. These are the same men are accused

of being behind the ethnic killings of thousands in the 1980s. The

International Criminal Court has not been able to prosecute - those

killings happened before it was formed, in 2002. So, our evidence

of this massacre could present a first chance to put these men on

If there were to be a prosecution in the future, would you be able to

But the reality is that President Mugabe, who recently turned 87,

after three decades in power, is unlikely to be prosecuted.

Currently there is not the international will to push for it.

So, for the foreseeable future, those implicated will walk free. We

made contact with a military officer in the Diamond area. He

took a great risk to speak to us. He told us where many of the

TRANSLATION: Diamond revenue is not benefiting the bulk of the people

of Zimbabwe, only a very small section of the population. The

people who benefit start from the top. From President Mugabe,

ministers from his party and the Every evening, in India, the

streets of Surat, live with diamond traders. This place is literally

awash with diamonds. There is an organisation that meant to make

sure that diamonds on world markets do not benefit perpetrators of

violence. It is called the Kimberley Process, or the KP. The

KP did eventually impose a sales ban after the massacre on the

diamonds from Marange. But now changes are being planned. We're

here in Brussels, at the head of the Kimberley Process. The Delors

plan which would allow these diamonds to be openly sold on world

markets, in spite of the violence - so what's going on? The KP Centre

team to Zimbabwe last August and concluded that the situation in the

Diamond area was still problematic, but much better. But we have

established their team only spent two and a half days in the Diamond

area, and only met a handful of miners. As far as the Kimberley

Process is concerned, what is the situation in the Marange diamond

fields right now in terms of human rights? The air has been an

improvement. On what basis do you think there has been significant

progress in human rights? This was on the basis that there was far

less military in the area, that the two concessions covered by the

Kimberley Process were showing visible and verifiable improvement.

That view that there has been some improvement has led the EU,

including Britain, to push for exports to resume from two Ky mines.

The UK strongly condemns the operation, and it insists that

human rights monitoring should continue, and that the sales and

should remain on the other mining areas for now. But our

investigations revealed serious human rights abuses which

international monitors completely missed, and which taint the whole

of the Marange area. We were told about this camp, and given its

location. We managed to film a few glimpses of it. It is run by police

and soldiers. Our cameras could not stay long, it was dangerous. The

former policeman we had met, Tino, knew what this place was - he used

to work here. We tracked down this man, who just got out of the camp

in February. He could not use his arm or walk properly.

TRANSLATION: They took us and put us in an enclosure. They started

beating us, 48 in the morning, 40 in the afternoon, 40 in the evening.

I was beaten on the ankles by a stone, and by a plank on the soles

of my feet. Other recent prisoners had consistent stories. Prisoners

are held in a razor wire enclosure behind these tents. Everyone gets

three severe beatings a day. Bones have been broken. Military dogs are

used to maul. This is amateur video of basic training which many

Zimbabwean policemen go through. A former policeman we had met had

been through this training before working in the camp in 2008. They

had been taught brutality. One policeman turned torturer said they

took it to an extreme in the camp. TRANSLATION: I saw one person who

was handcuffed at the back. The dog handler was making the dog maul him.

One of his ears was torn off. One finger was nearly severed. The

whole body was covered in blood. The prisoners are illegal miners.

Here, they are taught the rules. The diamonds are only for police

and soldiers - any diggers must work for them. Demand too much

money, work for the wrong rival, and they're punished. We heard they

carried out mock drownings, burnings and worse. Was that

routine, if a woman was taken to We know there is at least one more

camp like this. Several of the prisoners we met had been in this

camp both two years ago and very recently.

TRANSLATION: I was there in 2009. As I see it, nothing has changed.

We put our evidence to the Zimbabwean Government, but have

received no reply. It has publicly stated that its operations in

Marange are compliant with the Kimberley Process. Is the Kimberley

Process formally aware of the fact that there are torture camps

operating now in this area? Mega this is not something which has

been notified to us. How is it that journalists know more than the

Kimberley Process about the human rights situation on the ground?

do not have a huge secretary out to go out and investigate. We have to

operate on the basis of evidence which has brought to the intention

of those of us running the monitoring group. This man, a well-

known diamond industry trader, thinks the Kimberley Process is a

bad joke. Fundamentally, the Kimberley Process says, we are

taking care of human rights abuses, but they are not. It is wrong, it

is evil, and the Kimberley Process is impotent, it is incapable of

dealing with that issue. The KP is in turmoil over Zimbabwe. Some

members already considered the sales ban lifted, and some Marange

diamonds are already on sale. But pending wider approval of the EU

proposal, Britain is still boycotting the diamonds. You would

think it would be impossible to buy one here, but is it? We went down

to Hatton Garden, a Premier diamond retail street in London, to find

out. I'm going to go into this shop, which has been selling diamonds

since 1875. I'm going to ask them if they or any high-street jeweller

knows whether diamonds come from. This dealer was adamant... I have

no idea where they come from, not even the shopkeeper would know.

Even the supplier would not know. So you could end up buying

Zimbabwean diamonds without knowing it. Quite easily, absolutely.

approached 26 other jewellers on this street, none of them would

talk to us. We asked them if they had paperwork stating which country

their diamonds came from. In some cases, jeweller's in the UK can

clearly prove the origin of the diamonds, but often they cannot.

The British jewellers Association says the industry is working to set

up a system for more responsible supply chains. It has called on

British Jor-Els to say that they do not want Marange diamonds. We must

have had 1,000 customers coming in, but most of them do not even care,

they just want something to put on their finger. People may not care,

but behind these diamonds lies a terrible massacre, and ongoing

abuse. Do you think people in Britain should buy these diamonds?

I don't think people have the right to buy these diamonds. As of now,