From [HERE] South African authorities on Thursday invoked a legal move seldom used since the dying days of apartheid in order to charge 270 striking miners with the murder of 34 co-workers who were seen being shot dead in a hail of police bullets earlier this month.

Prosecutors have filed papers using a measure called "common purpose", arguing the miners were complicit in the killings since they were arrested at the scene with weapons.

Legal experts said the move will likely collapse when a court hearing bail applications for the 270 near the mine resumes sessions next week and lambasted prosecutors for inflaming a tense situation by seeking a mass indictment that will eventually be rejected. Pierre de Vos, a law expert at the University of Cape Town, wrote in a blog that the decision to charge the miners was "bizarre and shocking and represents a flagrant abuse of the criminal justice system, most probably in an effort to protect the police and/or politicians ..."