How Mugabe treats his critics

24.DEC.08
After an orgy of torture and kidnapping by President Robert Mugabe's secret police, eight civil rights activists and Movement for Democratic Change officials were due to appear in the Harare Magistrate's Court on Wednesday.

Most of them are to be charged, based on "confessions" made in the custody of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), of bombing Harare's Central police station and a "plot" to violently topple Mugabe.

Among those due to appear in court is human rights activist Jestina Mukoko, 54, who was abducted in a dawn raid on her home in Norton, about 30km north of Harare, on December 3.

'Jestina is alive but frail'

The CIO, led by Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, has collected filmed "interviews" with the MDC's director of security, Chris Dlamini, and Gandhi Mudzingwa, a close adviser to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who were both abducted earlier this month.

Mukoko, a widow and mother of a teenage son, was the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), which collected information on human rights abuses by Mugabe's security establishment.

Jameson Timba, an MDC MP in Harare, said on Tuesday: "Jestina is alive but frail."

He said he did not know the whereabouts of the other abductees. At least 15, including a 2-year-old child, have been missing for eight weeks.

On December 9, High Court Judge Anne-Marie Gowora ordered the Zimbabwe Republic Police to produce Mukoko, but in court the police said they didn't have her in their network of cells.

Mukoko had been due to officiate at a USAID-backed awards ceremony before her abduction by a group of seven plainclothes armed men and a woman.

Two of her colleagues, Pascal Gonzo and Brodrick Takawira, were abducted from the project's offices a week later.

The ZPP has played a crucial role in documenting politically motivated violence before and in the run-up to the March 2008 elections, won by the MDC.

The project against the MDC and other anti-Mugabe activists came from Mugabe's team of security advisers, the unofficial committee of security chiefs, known as the Joint Operations Command, of which Mutasa is a member.

On Friday, Tsvangirai, in temporary exile in Botswana, said he would withdraw from negotiations to form an inclusive government unless more than 40 abductees were freed or appeared in court.

President Kgalema Motlanthe said last week he did not believe the MDC had been training insurgents in Botswana to topple Mugabe.

On Saturday, the Harare High Court ordered police to produce a freelance photojournalist, Shadreck Manyere, who was abducted from Norton a week earlier. Nothing has been heard of him since.

- IOL