Police arrest rights lawyer, party officials
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe police arrested the country’s most prominent rights lawyer and four senior officials with the prime minister’s party on Sunday, a day after the country voted in a referendum on a new constitution that calls for more protection against human rights violations.
Rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa is being charged with allegedly “obstructing or defeating the course of justice” and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s chief legal adviser, Thabani Mpofu, is accused of impersonating police by compiling dossiers on unspecified crimes, a police official said.
Mtetwa was called to an address in Harare where police were searching an office used by Mpofu and began “shouting at officers and preventing them from doing their duties,” police official Charity Charamba said Sunday. She said all of those arrested were being held for questioning Sunday.
Police had been instructed to search the offices of a private group, the Democratic Alliance of Zimbabwe, where it was believed some information on alleged crimes was being illegally held, she said. Police removed unspecified “exhibits” for evidence against the group that they were engaged in police-type investigations, she said. Witnesses said computer equipment and phones were seized.
A witness said Sunday that officers accused Mtetwa of trying to take photographs of a security detail and she was forced into a police vehicle.