Zim: Opposition MP arrested
28/10/2004 11:00  - (SA)  

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Harare - Roy Bennett, an opposition MP facing a sentence by the Zimbabwe parliament of a year's jail, was arrested at Harare international airport on Thursday morning, his lawyer said.

"He was picked up at immigration. He was going to South Africa for a meeting," said lawyer Arnold Tsunga. "He was coming back on another flight later, definitely."

Bennett is on trial by parliament over a scuffle in May in which he shoved one of President Robert Mugabe's ministers to the ground. On Thursday, a parliamentary disciplinary committee recommended he go to jail for a year.

He was due to give evidence in his defence to parliament later on Thursday.

Family friends who asked not to be named said he was due to meet lawyers in South Africa over his legal battle to claim back 107 tons of coffee worth $120 000 dollars that was seized by ruling party businessmen after his farm was illegally occupied by heavily armed Zimbabwean troops on in May.

In an interview with Bennett earlier this week, he said the businessmen trucked out his coffee from the farm, Charleswood, in eastern Zimbabwe, and then exported it to Germany. Bennett said he was trying to stop a German company from paying the businessmen.

The 47-year-old MP is regarded as one of the most popular opposition political figures in the country and his farm has been the scene of a four-year campaign of murders, torture, arrests and looting by state security and ruling party militias. - dpa

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