REUTERS

Harare - A Zimbabwe court has tossed out charges against a man accused of urging his compatriots to copy mass protests in Egypt in a post to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Facebook wall, a lawyer said on Wednesday.

“The charges against my client were withdrawn” after prosecutors failed to retrieve the message from Facebook, Lizwe Jamela, the lawyer of Vikas Mavhudzi told AFP by telephone.

Mavhudzi was arrested in February in the second city of Bulawayo and charged with subversion, after riots erupted in Egypt forcing former president Hosni Mubarak to step down.

Prosecutors said that Mavhudzi wrote on Tsvangirai's Facebook wall that the mass uprising in Egypt was “worth emulating”. On Wednesday, the most recent message posted dated from October 2010.

“I'm overwhelmed don't know what to say Mr PM. What happened in Egypt is sending shockwaves to all dictators around the world,” read the message Mavhudzi allegedly wrote. “No weapon but unity of purpose. Worth emulating hey.”

Tsvangirai is in a coalition with his long-time rival President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the southern African nation since independence 31 years ago.

Social media was widely used in mass uprisings in Arab nations which led to the fall of presidents Mubarak, Tunisia's Ben Ali and currently Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

Also in February, 45 people including onlookers were detained when police barged into a meeting in the Zimbabwean capital where rights activists were watching a video of the Egypt protests ahead of a discussion on lessons other African states could draw from the demonstrations.

Thirty-nine were freed for lack of evidence while six are on trial on charges of plotting anti-government protests. Among them is Munyaradzi Gwisai a university lecturer and former member of parliament from Tsvangirai's party. - Sapa-AFP