Attempts by a top opposition official to be
released from police custody five days after his arrest on treason charges
failed again Tuesday, lawyers for Tendai Biti, secretary- general of the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said.
Harare high court judge Samuel Kudya dismissed an appeal by Biti's lawyers
that he was being illegally held. The lawyers argued that police had failed to
bring him to court despite the warrant for his arrest stating he was to be
brought before a magistrate "immediately."
Biti has been held in police cells for a fifth night now, despite laws that
demand no one can be held for more than 48 hours without being brought before a
magistrate.
Biti's entanglements with the government of long-serving President Robert
Mugabe are just the latest impediment that placed before the opposition as it
prepares for run-off elections June 27.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who will face off against Mugabe, has been jailed
repeatedly during the run-off election period and was threatened again on
Tuesday with arrest by the government.
Biti, also a respected Harare lawyer, is accused of treason, based on
statements he is alleged to have made in a document leaked to the Zimbabwe state press in April.
The statement purported to be an MDC policy document but was immediately
dismissed by the MDC as a fake.
Biti faces three other charges, including one of "insulting the
president," for saying 84-year-old President Mugabe, in power for an
unbroken 28 years since independence in 1980, was "an evil man who should
be arrested and handed over to the Hague" international criminal court.
"We shall have to take it up again tomorrow," said Biti's lawyer,
Lewis Uriri. "This decision cannot go unchallenged."
He said Biti was "doing reasonably well, but he's obviously upset because
he has committed no offence and believes that police are holding him on
trumped-up charges to prevent him from campaigning."
Tsvangirai's campaigning has been repeatedly thwarted not only by his multiple
arrests in western Zimbabwe but also by the banning of his rallies, the
confiscation of his buses and vehicles and long unexplained detentions by
police, dpa reported.
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