A government minister and a Catholic priest arrested for campaigning for political openness in Zimbabwe were released on bail late on Tuesday — after five days of severe deprivation in police cells, their lawyers said.
The detention of co-minister of national healing Moses Mzila-Ndlovu is the latest in a string of arrests in what critics say is deliberate harassment by President Robert Mugabe’s police.
Mzila-Ndlovu and Catholic priest Marko Mkandla, who were given no food during their incarceration, were brought to court in handcuffs and leg irons, watched by a large detachment of riot police, lawyers said.
They were freed on bail, but only after police detained three lawyers who were due to represent them in court in the north-western town of Hwange, and held them for the entire day, claiming they needed to clear the lawyers’ vehicle.
The incidents appear to contradict undertakings the 87-year-old Mugabe gave to the leaders of Southern Africa nations after they demanded he end violence and arbitrary arrests, and to carry out political reforms he signed up to with the establishment of the coalition government two years ago.
Mzila-Ndlovu, a member of the smaller faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was arrested on Friday last week with Mkandla after they attended a meeting where they demanded investigations into the massacres of up to 20 000 civilians by Mugabe’s security forces in the early 1980s.
They were accused of holding a meeting without police permission, while the priest was also accused of being in the possession of pornography.
At least six parliamentarians of the two MDC factions have been arrested this year under what lawyers say are spurious charges, bringing to 29 the number who have been prosecuted since the power sharing government began in early 2009. — Sapa-dpa