Biti brought to court in leg irons

Biti brought to court in leg irons

TREASON: MDC secretary Tendai Biti

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• Text: Tsvangirai speech to MDC parliamentary caucus

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POLICE brought Tendai Biti to court Saturday, the first time he has been seen in public since plainclothes officers hustled him off a plane as he returned home last Thursday.

Police say Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change, will be charged with treason, which can carry the death penalty.

They responding only grudgingly to a High Court judge's order to produce him on Saturday after previously refusing to say where he was being held or allow his lawyers to see him.

Biti's arrest has added to concerns over the already troubled June 27 presidential run-off vote.

The vote pits Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai against longtime leader Robert Mugabe.

Since the March 29 first round of voting, opposition supporters have been brutally attacked, other key opposition figures have been arrested and Tsvangirai's attempts to campaign have been repeatedly interrupted by police.

Reporters watched as a tense-looking Biti, handcuffed and wearing leg irons, was brought into Justice Ben Hlatshwayo's court Saturday. He said he was "fine" when reporters asked how he was.

Party spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo called the treason charges "politically motivated."

Opposition lawyer Lewis Uriri said Biti told them he spent the first 24 hours after his arrest Thursday being interrogated at a police station east of Harare, and since then has been at a station in Harare that is notorious for poor conditions.

Police showed Hlatshwayo an arrest warrant they said a lower court judge had issued earlier this month as justification for holding Biti, Mlilo said. Hlatshwayo said police should bring Biti before the lower court judge Monday and allowed them to return him to jail.

Earlier, according to Uriri, police had told Hlatshwayo they were not sure his order to produce Biti - issued in response to an opposition request a day earlier - was genuine. Hlatshwayo then gave police an hour to produce Biti.

The opposition said in a statement that Tsvangirai was again detained by police Saturday as he campaigned in rural Zimbabwe. He and 11 others on his campaign team were stopped at a roadblock and taken to a police station, where they were held for about five hours before being released, Mlilo said.

"It is clearly impossible to talk about free and fair elections in Zimbabwe and to suggest otherwise is to be clearly blind to the grave harassment, intimidation and violence that the people of Zimbabwe have had to endure over the past few years," the party said in a statement that called on Zimbabwe's neighbours to intervene.

Tsvangirai came first in a field of four in the first round of voting, but according to official figures did not win the 50 per cent plus one vote required to avoid a run-off.

Police say the treason charge Biti faces stems from a transition document the Mugabe government contends is a blueprint for regime change. He is also accused of spreading false information for releasing the opposition's own tally from the first round of elections. Under Zimbabwean law, only election officials can release results.

Biti was arrested before he could even present his passport after flying home Thursday. He and Tsvangirai had spent most of the time since the first round of voting travelling outside Zimbabwe amid fears of an alleged government assassination plot against opposition figures. Tsvangirai returned in late May.

Tsvangirai, who was himself acquitted of treason in 2004 after a trial that lasted more than a year, has described the charges against Biti are "frivolous."

Also Saturday, Mugabe, addressing a funeral of a retired general, sounded a typically militant campaign note. "We are prepared to fight for our country, to go to war for it," he said.

In addition to claims of orchestrating violence against opposition supporters, Mugabe's government has in recent weeks been accused of using food as a political weapon.

The government ordered independent aid agencies last week to stop work after Mugabe accused foreign aid agencies of working with the opposition to topple him. But the effect of the crackdown has been to make millions of hungry Zimbabweans even more dependent on his government, just as they are deciding whether to keep him in power.

U.S. officials said that last week security forces confiscated a large U.S. food donation intended for children and gave it to Mugabe supporters.

Mugabe, Zimbabwe's head of government since 1980, was lauded early in his rule for campaigning for racial reconciliation and building the economy. But in recent years, he has been accused of ruining the economy and holding onto power through fraud and intimidation. - AP
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