OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday
ZIMBABWEAN police have released four officials of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change who were arrested during a raid on party offices on Thursday morning.
MDC youth wing chair Nelson Chamisa and Gandi Mudzingwa, personal assistant to MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, and Join Nkatazo and Socks Ncube were released.
MDC official Richard Maasdorp said police came to the MDC offices in central Harare on Friday morning, demanding to be allowed to search them again.
MDC leaders slammed Thursday’s raid where police came with warrants to search for “arms of war” as the start of a government crackdown against the opposition party. The search came three days after a handgrenade exploded outside the front door of the MDC’s headquarters. No weapons were found at the party’s three offices.
During the search, police attempted to remove documents from the MDC’s offices, but were prevented from doing so by the party’s lawyers.
The MDC raised the raids and arrests in the Zimbabwean Parliament on Thursday. Party secretary-general Welshman Ncube accused the government of using the raids as a pretext to obtain information about MDC fundraising.
“This is yet another attempt to access the database and the MDCfinancial records to unleash terror on people giving the MDC financial support,” Ncube said.
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