Zimbabwean police raided the house of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday, looking for weapons they say were used to fake an assassination attempt on him.
Movement for Democratic Change supporters have accused President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party of trying to assassinate Tsvangirai during an attack on an MDC rally in Mvurwi, northeast of Harare early last month.
ZANU-PF denied the charge and alleged that Tsvangirai himself staged the incident to discredit the government.
"It is the usual harassment by the authorities. It is a relentless persecution which is totally unfounded. They want to break our spirits but they will not succeed," Tsvangirai said as police scoured his family home.
Police were welcome to come back and search his house any time they wanted to, he added.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said officers searched Tsvangirai's home for tear gas canisters and other weapons used during the Mvurwi incident.
"We would want to know the origins of the canisters and also the weapons because we would like to minimize all cases of political violence ahead of next year's parliamentary elections," he said.
Tsvangirai has said the Mvurwi incident could be the beginning of a bloody campaign by Mugabe to win next year's polls.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and his party, ZANU-PF, is locked in an often violent power struggle with the MDC, which was launched five years ago.
The MDC draws most of its support from cities, where people blame Mugabe for Zimbabwe's worst economic crisis since independence. The party has a third of the seats in the 150-member parliament.
Mugabe, 80, denies that he has mismanaged the economy and instead accuses opponents of sabotage to punish him for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution among landless blacks.
Tsvangirai's house and offices have been searched several times in recent years for weapons and documents that could implicate him in criminal activities.
Tsvangirai is awaiting judgement on one charge of treason for allegedly trying to have Mugabe killed. He is waiting for the start of a separate treason trial based on charges he tried to overthrow Mugabe's government through street protests last June.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
RSS