Tsvangirai aide charged with treason

A leading aide of Zimbabwe prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai was charged with terrorism today in what was widely seen as a plot to wreck the country’s new coalition government.

Roy Bennett, arrested on Friday as he was due to take up his post in the power-sharing Cabinet, appeared in court today in the capital Harare.

Mr Tsvangirai says the charges have been trumped up by hard-line supporters of president Robert Mugabe, his deadly rival.

Police told a magistrate Mr Bennett was accused of attempting to commit terrorism; banditry and sabotage; conspiring to acquire arms to disrupt essential services; illegal possession of fire arms and weapons; and attempting to leave the country illegally, the party said.

Mr Tsvangirai’s MDC party called for the release of Mr Bennett and several political and human rights activists detained even as the coalition agreement was being finalised.

“These charges are scandalous and politically motivated,” the party said.

Meanwhile the Cabinet met for the first time, but no substantive issues were discussed, a Tsvangirai spokesman said.

Mr Tsvangirai met Mugabe afterwards to raise concerns about the “credibility of the government” and the need for freedom of expression.

Amnesty International cited Mr Bennett’s arrest in calling for the African Union and the United Nations to send human rights investigators to Zimbabwe.

“A number of events that have taken place since the swearing-in of a new government in Zimbabwe suggest that there is a force within the Zimbabwean security forces that continues ordering violations of human rights as a method of dealing with people they do not like,” Simeon Mawanza, the global human rights watchdog’s Zimbabwe expert, said.

Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal – created to end a year of political deadlock - aims to have rival politicians work together to address Zimbabwe’s chronic economic meltdown.

It keeps Mugabe as president after three decades in power, but many of his top aides have lost cabinet posts.

Zimbabwe has the world’s highest inflation rate and faces acute food and fuel shortages. The hunger crisis has left up to seven million people, more than half the population, dependent on foreign handouts and a cholera epidemic blamed on collapsed water, sanitation and health services has killed more than 3,600 people since August.

The international medical aid agency Medecins San Frontieres said the cholera epidemic was just the most visible evidence of the collapse of Zimbabwe’s health system. It called on both international donors and the Zimbabwean government to do more, saying other epidemic disease outbreaks were possible.

It warned that the next epidemic could be malaria, because Zimbabwe has been unable to afford preventive measures such as distributing insecticide-treated nets and the peak season for the disease is imminent.