As the dust settles over the episode where former mayor Elias Mudzuri's passport was impounded at the airport, it has now emerged authorities tried to make a case over the fact that he was using a diplomatic passport issued while he was still Harare's mayor. The Registrar General's office tried to argue in court that because Mudzuri was dismissed by local government Minister Ignatius Chombo, he was no longer entitled to use the passport. According to Mudzuri's lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa her client never requested the diplomatic passport in the first place and all they wanted were for the rules of natural justice to be followed. Mudzuri had a right to be given adequate notice of any withdrawal actions and not to be left without a travel document at the airport as happened on Sunday. Mtetwa told Newsreel a day after the High Court ordered the Registrar-General's office to return the passport, that Mudzuri applied for an ordinary green passport used by most Zimbabweans.