Mugabe accuses MDC of terror
2007-03-18 12:26
Special Report
A classical music presenter for the BBC has been arrested and is in custody in Zimbabwe.
Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has accused the opposition party of perpetrating terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in a bid to oust his government, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Mugabe, 83, has defiantly rejected a torrent of international condemnation following the beating of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and a number of his colleagues last week.
He says the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is a violent party sponsored by former colonial power Britain and other Western allies.
Speaking at a ceremony to mark International Women's Day in the capital Harare on Saturday, Mugabe said the authorities would brook no more lawless behaviour from the MDC.
"We have given too much room to mischief-makers and shameless stooges of the West," Mugabe was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mail.
"Scores of innocent people going about their legitimate business have fallen prey to terrorist attacks that are part of the desperate and illegal plot to unconstitutionally change the government of the country," he added.
He was addressing government ministers, MPs, religious groups and NGOs at a belated ceremony to mark International Women's Day under the theme: Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women.
As he spoke, two badly-beaten female members of the MDC were denied permission to leave the country to seek medical treatment in neighbouring South Africa, the opposition said.
Authorities at Harare International Airport said Grace Kwinjeh and Sekai Holland needed letters of clearance from the health ministry before being allowed to take a medical air rescue flight to South Africa.
Meanwhile an opposition leader was still in police custody on Sunday, following his arrest at Harare International Airport, his party said.
Arthur Mutambara, who leads a breakaway faction of Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC, was arrested on Saturday as he tried to travel to neighbouring South Africa to visit his wife.
He was being held at Harare Central Police Station.
Mutambara was one of dozens of opposition officials and civic rights activists rounded up by police last Sunday as they tried to hold a prayer rally in Harare's Highfield suburb.
Many of those detained - including party founding president Tsvangirai - were badly beaten in custody, provoking an international outcry. A High Court ordered their release earlier this week.
Defence lawyer Beatrice Mutambara said Mutambara's arrest and detention on Saturday was a contemptuous, arrogant and malicious defiance of the High Court order.
"We are therefore proceeding to apply on an urgent basis for the release of our client from the unlawful detention," she said in a letter to the officer commanding law and order at Harare Central Police Station, a copy of which was seen by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Mutambara's MDC said in a statement late on Saturday that police wanted to charge their leader with inciting public violence.
- SAPA