June 10: Police rearrests ‘brutalized’ activists, govt jabs destabilizers

Zimbabwe police Wednesday arrested three opposition activists on accusations that they lied in saying that they had been abducted and tortured, their lawyers said.

The three opposition women alleged that they were tortured and sexually abused by their abductors, whom they said took them from a police station in May, after they had been arrested for organizing an anti-government protest.

On Wednesday, police re-arrested the women at Harare Central Police Station where they had gone to surrender their passports as part of their bail conditions in the case linked to the protest march, said Kumbirai Mafunda, spokesman for Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, which is providing lawyers for the trio.

The arrests came as a group of United Nations human rights experts said the Zimbabwe government should “immediately end” the practice of disappearances and torture “that appear aimed at suppressing protests and dissent.”

Zimbabwe’s Home Affairs Minister Kazembe Kazembe told reporters Wednesday that the alleged abductions had been fabricated and were part of a wider agenda to destabilize President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.