Fights break out as Mugabe murder plot trial opens
Baton-wielding police stopped Western diplomats, opposition MPs and independent journalists from entering the Harare court. Several people were arrested.
Mr Tsvangirai and two senior officials from his Movement for Democratic Change party face the death penalty if convicted.
Police outside insisted there was no room left in the court, but lawyers inside said the public benches were virtually empty.
"This is a public place and it is supposed to be a public court. Obviously the state has something to hide," said opposition MP Priscilla Misihairabwi as officers pushed her away with their riot clubs.
Sophia Honey, second secretary at the British High Commission, also had a truncheon rammed against her throat. "We will get you," one policeman told a German diplomat over the chaos.
Judge Paddington Garwe later ordered police to admit "all interested parties and members of the public".
A group of diplomats immediately delivered a "strong verbal protest" at the foreign ministry across the road, and said a formal protest would follow. But officers manning the gates about 30 yards away said they had not received that order more than two hours later.
Mr Tsvangirai who says he was "framed" arrived in an armoured car.
The charges against him are based on a videotape allegedly showing him discussing Mr Mugabe's "elimination" with a political consultant.
The company, Montreal's Dickens and Madson, is run by a former Israeli intelligence officer and Mugabe lobbyist, Ari Ben-Menashe.
Critics of the government have said the video, which is shown repeatedly on Zimbabwean state TV, appears to have been heavily edited.
