Iden Wetherell, editor of the privately owned Zimbabwe Independent, and two of the newspapers’ reporters were released on bail on Monday after being held for a weekend in police cells.
They were arrested after printing a report that President Robert Mugabe had ”commandeered” an Air Zimbabwe plane to go on holiday.
Wetherell (55), news editor Vincent Kahiya and reporter Dumisani Muleya were granted bail of Z$20 000 by Harare magistrate Kudzai Tongogara. They appeared on charges of ”criminal defamation” against Mugabe.
The three men were not asked to plead and were ordered to appear in court again on January 29.
The three were arrested on Saturday after the newspaper reported on Friday that Mugabe last week ”commandeered” an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 767 to fly him and his family around Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore on his annual holiday.
The state claimed that the story was ”false and criminally defamatory of the president”.
On Saturday, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said the report was ”blasphemous”.
Emerging unshaven from the brief hearing, Wetherell said: ”We certainly stand by our story and any suggestion that it was false we reject. We will be putting up a robust defence.
”This clumsy attempt to silence us by locking us up for 48 hours, prosecuting us over a story where much of the facts are agreed, will do nothing to silence the voice of the Zimbabwe independent.” — Sapa