Zimbabwe police arrested three journalists on Saturday for reporting that President Robert Mugabe commandeered a passenger plane from the national airline for his personal travel, their lawyer said.
Lawyer Linda Cook said police had indicated they would hold Zimbabwe Independent editor Iden Wetherell, news editor Vincent Kahiya and senior reporter Dumisani Muleya overnight before laying criminal defamation charges against them.
"The police said there was not time to take warned and cautioned statements today. They are saying they cannot release them and invite them back to the police station tomorrow because this is a high profile case," Cook said.
Police chief spokesman Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena could not be reached for comment.
On Friday the Zimbabwe Independent wrote in a front page article that Mugabe, who is on annual leave, had ordered an Air Zimbabwe plane from the capital Harare to ferry him from Malaysia to Indonesia, leaving passengers stranded. In remarks carried by state media on Saturday, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo called the report "absurd and criminally false" and said the paper would be held accountable.
Cook said it was not yet clear whether the police would also charge the newsmen under strict new media laws enacted in 2002 aimed at muzzling government critics. The government says they are meant to restore professionalism in journalism.
The Zimbabwe Independent, like most other privately owned newspapers in the country, has been critical of Mugabe's government as the country grapples with a political and economic crisis widely blamed on government mismanagement.
The government accuses private media houses of driving a Western-led propaganda campaign against it, in retaliation for its seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution among landless blacks.
More than a dozen journalists have been arrested and charged under the media legislation introduced soon after Mugabe's controversial re-election in 2002, which seeks to punish the publication of falsehoods with a stiff fine or a jail term.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS