The head of Zimbabwe's state-controlled media watchdog organisation was subjected to damaging questioning in the high court yesterday as he tried to justify his decision to ban the Daily News, the country's largest selling and only independent daily newspaper.

Tafataona Mahoso, chairperson of the media and information commission, was laughed at in the administrative court packed with journalists from the now-closed newspaper, drank constantly from a glass of water, let his voice sink to a whisper when asked difficult questions and repeatedly had to be told by the judge to answer questions put to him by the newspaper's lawyers.

The Daily News was forcibly shut down on September 12 when heavily armed paramilitary police raided its offices and drove its staff out.

A week later, the media commission refused to grant the newspaper a licence to operate, effectively banning it.

From its founding in March 1999, the newspaper delivered constant exposure of the corruption, violence and lawlessness under President Robert Mugabe's government, and was the only daily voice where dissent to the regime could be expressed.

The administrative court, a branch of the high court, sat today to hear the Daily News' appeal against its banning by the commission. However, lawyers pointed out that in terms of notorious new press laws which also established the media commission last year, the court's only power is to refer the case back to the commission and ask it to review its decision.

Mahoso said the commission had decided to refuse the paper a licence as it was an "illegal" organisation.

He pointed to statements by its owners, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), that it would refuse to register with the commission because the law, the "Access to Information and Protection of Privacy" Act, was unconstitutional.

He became evasive when he was asked by advocate Eric Matinenga if the Daily News had ever been convicted of a crime.

Another reason he gave for the commission's refusal to licence the newspaper was that it had employed a journalist with a criminal conviction for "criminal libel" against the government in 200.

Mahoso was silent when asked if he was aware that the journalist had appealed against the conviction, but had not yet had his appeal heard.

"Do you accept you are not a court of law?" Matinenga asked him.

The supreme court, dominated by pro-Mugabe judges, earlier this year heard the Daily News' appeal against the law, but on September 11 said it refused to hear the charges that it violated rights to freedom of expression and instead told ANZ it had to apply for registration with the commission.

The ruling was followed a day later by the police raid.

Mahoso gave evidence that no formal minutes were taken in the meeting where the Daily News fate was decided.

Four of the seven members of the commission were present, although he said the decision was "unanimous".

He said it was "irrelevant" that the closing of the newspaper was depriving access to information to almost a million of its readers daily, twice as many as the state-run Herald, the government chief print propaganda organ.

"You obviously are not being clear or you are deliberately not telling the truth," Matinenga accused him.

The hearing continues today.

Observers said the ban marked the end of a determined campaign by President Robert Mugabe's government against the newspaper which, has seen it bombed twice, its editors and scores of other journalists repeatedly arrested on fake charges, while police have taken almost no action against illegal ruling party "bans" on selling the newspaper in many rural areas, and the public burning of thousands of copies of the paper. – Sapa-DPA.