US citizen detained over Mugabe goblin comment

HARARE: Zimbabwe police detained a US citizen and seized her laptop yesterday on suspicion of calling President Robert Mugabe a “goblin” on Twitter, the first arrest since the creation of a Ministry of Cyber Security last month, her lawyers said.

Martha O’Donovan, who works for Magamba TV, which describes itself as Zimbabwe’s leading producer of political satire, was picked up during a dawn raid on her Harare home, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said.

The police were armed with a search warrant linked to an investigation of a case of “undermining authority of or insulting the president”.

Central to their investigation, it said, was a post on O’Donovan’s Twitter feed referring to a “Goblin” whose wife and step-sons had imported a Rolls-Royce, an apparent reference to 93-year-old Mugabe even though he was not named.

Recent online reports have claimed Mugabe’s two adult sons, Robert jr and Chatunga, have imported at least one luxury vehicle from neighbouring South Africa.

O’Donovan’s Twitter account was locked on Friday but a photograph on her home page referred to #ShutdownZimbabwe2016, a series of protests last year that rattled Mugabe’s government and elicited a fierce crackdown.

The US embassy in Harare confirmed that an American citizen had been arrested. – Reuters