Zimbabwe police accused of torture



HARARE, Zimbabwe — Top opposition leaders were assaulted and tortured by police who broke up a prayer meeting planned to protest government policies, colleagues of the activists said Monday. One protester was shot dead by police in Sunday's unrest in the outskirts of the capital and scores of others were arrested. Journalists trying to cover the events also were arrested.

In a statement, organizers of the prayer meeting, an alliance of opposition, civic, church leaders and student and anti-government groups, said lawyers who visited the detainees Monday reported the main opposition party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, fainted three times after being beaten by police.

The alliance, called the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, said another opposition leader, Lovemore Madhuku, was taken to the main Harare hospital early Monday after collapsing from police assaults.

At least four other opposition and civic leaders were beaten and tortured in custody, the campaign said.

"The police thoroughly assaulted leaders of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign while in custody," the group said.

The alliance said lawyers were still trying to establish the whereabouts of all those picked up by police, saying some were denied food or legal advice.

No comment was immediately available from police on Monday.

Opponents of President Robert Mugabe blame him for acute food shortages, deepening economic woes, record inflation of some 1,600 percent — the highest in the world — and repression and corruption.

They have demanded the ouster of Mugabe, 83, Zimbabwe's only ruler since independence from Britain in 1980. Fliers for Sunday's prayer meeting proclaimed: "Zimbabwe Will Be Saved."

"Our just, legitimate and peaceful struggle will not cease," the alliance said Monday.

On Sunday, police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said police arrested Tsvangirai and other top party officials as they "instigated people to come out and commit acts of violence."

He said one man was shot and killed when 200 opposition party "thugs" attacked about 20 policemen. The organizers identified the dead protester as Gift Tandare, an activist of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change.

Police spokesman Bvudzijena told state television that three police officers were hospitalized with injuries in the violence.

Authorities had declared the prayer meeting to be in breach of a three-month ban on political demonstrations. Riot and paramilitary police reinforcements, which had been deployed since Friday in the area where the prayer meeting was scheduled, sealed off approaches to a sports ground and fired tear gas to disperse the gathering.

A Harare freelance photographer, Tsvangirayi Mukwahzi, and a freelance television producer, Tendai Nusiyu, were among the journalists arrested at the scene.

Bvudzijena, the police spokesman, alleged that demonstrators tried to use children as human shields against the police and had picked up tear gas canisters and lobbed them back at police. He gave no figures of the number of arrests.

In their statement, the prayer meeting organizers said police patrolled the area late into the night Sunday, injuring several people in efforts to clear the streets and impose a curfew in the township.

Zimbabwe police accused of torture

I have no doubt that one reason for our recent spike in crime is because of these Zim bastards! angry.gif

Foreign criminals are responsible for a large proportion of the serious crimes committed in South Africa, according to an article in Rapport on Sunday.

Thousands of illegal immigrants are convicted every year in South Africa for crimes such as robbery, murder, rape and drug-trafficking, a study from the Strategic Studies Institute at the University of Pretoria has found.

A professor at the institute, Mike Hough, said almost a quarter of the cases in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court in January 2004 involved foreigners, and the number was increasing all the time.

He said most of the foreign criminals were Zimbabweans, who were generally involved in bank robberies, fraud and drug-related offences. Nigerians were the second most common culprits, often for drug-related crimes. Mozambicans came third, convicted of robbery and fraud.

Police were not able to verify these results because at present the South African Police Service (SAPS) did not maintain that sort of data, said Captain Ronnie Naidoo, national police spokesperson.

"Unfortunately I can't give you an answer. We don't keep statistics on foreigners," he said on Sunday.

He said police did record the nationality of the criminals they arrested, but it was not collated.

The last study done by the SAPS was in 1994, which found 12 670 illegal immigrants involved in serious crimes.

Although they are often sent back to their countries of origin, many end up in South African prisons, said Hough.

Hough estimated that at present R344 458 a day was spent keeping foreigners in prison.

He said his study was not trying to increase xenophobia in South Africa, but that there were signs of "foreign involvement in the South African crime scene". - Sapa

Hough estimated that at present R344 458 a day was spent keeping foreigners in prison.

Sometimes a little torture is necessary to get the answers you need!