HARARE – Four pro-democracy activists yanked off a plane at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare and held incommunicado for eight hours were tortured, rights lawyers said on Thursday.
Namatai Kwekweza, union leader Robson Chere, Harare Ward 5 councillor Samuel Gwenzi and Vusumuzi Moyo had just boarded their Fasjet flight to Victoria Falls when they were ordered to disembark by men dressed in civilian clothes.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) says the four were all tortured “with different intensity and severity.”
“Chere’s was very severe,” said Rose Hanzi, the ZLHR’s executive director.
The activists were taken to different rooms at the domestic terminal building where the torture allegedly took place, and then handed over to police after being held for several hours.
“The police are complicit,” Hanzi said. “They just received them with clear evidence of torture. They should have arrested the torturers.”
The ZLHR said the four activists had been charged with “disorderly conduct in a public place” after they allegedly took part in a court protest last month in solidarity with over 70 activists from the Citizens Coalition for Change who are held without bail on public order charges.
The quartet will now appear in court on Friday after police failed to take present them before a magistrate on Thursday.
Zimbabwe’s notoriously paranoid security agencies reportedly fear protests during a SADC summit later this month and are monitoring opposition leaders and leading pro-democracy activists.
In a statement on Thursday, the British embassy in Harare called on the Zimbabwe government to “uphold the rule of law, including constitutional rights to assembly and association, and to ensure due process for all Zimbabweans.”
