MDC chief 'beaten to a pulp' by Harare police
By Peta Thornycroft
Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 54, can hardly see out of his eyes, and could neither eat nor speak hours after he was arrested and then beaten by Zimbabwe police.
He is in a lice-infested, urine-soaked cell at a police station in Borrowdale, Harare - a five-minute drive from President Robert Mugabe's opulent Chinese-styled mansion.
Veteran protester and lawyer Lovemore Madhuku, 40, is lying in agony in the government's Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare - with a broken wrist and extensive bruises after policemen beat him to a pulp.
Arthur Mutambara, 39, Zimbabwe's other main opposition leader, has not been seen by his lawyer or his family since he was detained early on Sunday when he tried to drive through a police roadblock to attend a prayer rally in the Highfield township, south-west of the city centre.
Many families are in the same boat. Their loved ones are also incarcerated in Harare's filthy police stations, having been detained after several brutal street battles.
Throughout Sunday night and Monday, lawyers, families and political and human rights activists tried to find out where about 100 people who had attended the rally were being held.
"They move them around on purpose, split them up, and lie to us so we don't find them," said opposition MP Priscilla Misihairabwe-Mushonga.
Lawyers in Harare, battling judicial delays, were trying to get a writ of habeas corpus out of the Harare High Court on Monday to ensure that none of their clients had been killed.
"So far we have seen none of them," said Harrison Nkomo.
"We are very worried."
Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena gave a long interview to state journalists after the rally was blocked by hundreds of riot policemen, claiming that about 200 youths from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had attacked the police and injured three of them.
"The three police officers were attacked by an unruly mob of some 200 MDC thugs who were using children as shields," he said, explaining why police had shot dead Gift Tandare, an MDC activist.
A fellow activist saw Tandare shot. "They had been firing at us for a long time and throwing teargas and trying to stop us from getting to the rally.
"We were very angry, why not be angry at this cruel regime? We were picking up the teargas and throwing it back at them.
"We charged them and then they fired. We saw he was dead, but we couldn't get in to pick up his body, so the police took it."
Tsvangirai who helped form the MDC in 2000, has been charged, tried and acquitted of treason, and been arrested several times.
There have been numerous assassination attempts against him.
