Another journalist and a senior media executive have been arrested in Zimbabwe.
Raphael Khumalo, general manager of the privately owned Zimbabwe Independent, and reporter Itai Dzamara were arrested on Wednesday after police requested their presence for questioning and to make statements, said Linda Cook, Khumalo’s lawyer, during a brief telephonic interview with the Mail & Guardian Online.
The men were arrested over the newspaper’s report last week that President Robert Mugabe had ”commandeered” an aircraft of the national airline to take him on holiday.
Dzamara was one of the two authors of the report. The other, Dumisani Muleya, was arrested last week with Zimbabwe Independent editor Iden Wetherell and news editor Vincent Kahiya, and released on bail on Monday after being held for a weekend in police cells.
Cook said that Khumalo was arrested as a company representative and not in his personal capacity.
She said the two men might not be held in jail, though.
Wetherell said: ”They went down to central police station at about 10am. They knew what they were in for. I think it’s a case of police tidying up the case [following his own arrest].”
Trevor Ncube, owner of the Zimbabwe Independent and the Zimbabwe Standard, told the M&G Online: ”It has become clear to all of us that the media in Zimbabwe is under siege. The current unwarranted action on the Zimbabwe Independent must be of grave concern to all those who value press freedom.
”I am concerned that with the Daily News out of the way, the government’s focus is now on my two newspapers, the Zimbabwe Independent and the Standard. We are determined to resist these acts of harassment and intimidation.”
Ncube is also the majority owner of M&G Media, the holding company that publishes the M&G Online.
Wetherell, Kahiya and 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.
A high court judge on January 9 ordered the government and police to lift an illegal four-month ban on the Daily News, the country’s critical daily voice, but the paper has not resumed publishing.
Earlier, a Zimbabwe court in the southwestern city of Bulawayo ruled the Daily News could resume publishing but Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe’s Information Minister, opposed the judgement, saying it had ”no practical force”.
The Daily News was shut down by armed police in September after the Supreme Court ruled it was operating illegally by not being registered with the state-appointed media commission.