Telegraph woman charged - Mugabe's thugs given police protection

PETA THORNYCROFT, the Zimbabwe correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, was charged yesterday with working illegally as a journalist and with driving with incorrect number plates.

She was still in cells in Mutare central police station, 200 miles east of Harare, last night, her third in custody.

But police did not carry out their earlier threat to charge her under the widely condemned Public Order and Security Act.

Ms Thornycroft said: "I'm fine, absolutely fine. This isn't a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich but it's still bloody irritating."

Hours after her arrest in Chimanimani on Wednesday, she was told she would be charged with publishing false news, an offence which, under this notorious law, carries a possible five-year sentence.

No evidence was ever produced to substantiate the charge and the authorities have failed to take it further.

Instead police have chosen to charge her with working illegally under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which President Robert Mugabe signed into law a fortnight ago.

Under this legislation, all journalists have to apply for accreditation from the government to continue working.

But they have three months in which to do so and are permitted to work in the interim. Tapiwanashe Kujinga, Ms Thornycroft's lawyer, described the charge as "obviously unfounded".

As a secondary line of attack, police have held the number plates on her car against her.

When she moved from South Africa to Zimbabwe last July, she took her car with her. Ms Thornycroft began the process of registering her vehicle with the Zimbabwean authorities but the new number plates had not been fitted at the time of her arrest.

Paperwork proving her legal ownership of the car has been produced for the police.

Officers have allowed Ms Thornycroft, 57, unrestricted access to her lawyer. She is being held in a tiny cell, with no bed and a bucket for a lavatory.

Ms Thornycroft has the cell to herself and friends have been allowed to deliver food and blankets.

At 7am every day, she has been allowed to leave the cell and spend the day in the police station's offices.

He hopes a hearing will take place today or tomorrow and that she will not be kept in custody until the end of the Easter break on Tuesday.

State radio in Zimbabwe has been broadcasting false reports of Ms Thornycroft's release since Thursday night.

The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation website accuses her of being "in the forefront of destroying [her] own country using the pen".

It refers to Ms Thornycroft, whose late husband was jailed under apartheid in South Africa, as "a former Rhodesian journalist who could not accept black rule at independence".

She has been singled out for abuse the official media. In November, she was accused of being a "terrorist".

Observers believe the arrests and vilification are part of Mr Mugabe's campaign to silence independent reporters in Zimbabwe.

Riot police fired tear gas to protect a gang loyal to Mr Mugabe yesterday when people in Zimbabwe's second city of Sizenda, enraged by months of violence, retaliated against their Zanu-PF party tormentors

Gadaafi has been giving Mugabe money and muscle*****More sinister is the fact that Gadaafi insisted on calling into conclave Harare's small community of Indian Muslims, telling them that they must assist Mugabe's plans by declaring a jihad (holy war) to throw the whites out. If they did not do this, he told the Muslim elders, he would bring in strong arm men from the Pagad movement in Cape Town with which he had close links. There has long been speculation that Gadaafi might have links to Pagad, an extremist Muslim vigilante movement often linked to bombings and murders in the Cape, including bomb attacks on US-linked enterprises such as the Planet Hollywood restaurant on the Cape waterfront, but this is the first open confirmation of the fact.

The bulk of Harare's Muslim community, consisting largely of merchants and professionals, was aghast at this demand and has failed to declare a jihad ,a failure which they believe lies behind the sudden spate of attacks on Muslim shops by Zanu-PF youths in the last ten days. For heaven's sake, said one Muslim merchant, we all do business with whites all the time. We rely on them and most of us are appalled by what Mugabe's doing. It's obvious that those youths who were sent to attack white and Muslim shops were meant to be punishing us for not complying.

However, Gadaafi - like Mugabe a virtual paranoiac in matters of personal security - had also left behind two extra bodyguards for Mugabe and four specialist coordinators. These men are believed to have experience in the training and handling of death squads and they have, in the last month, bought up 20 houses right around Zimbabwe to act as safe houses for the squads. The houses are strategically scattered only four are in Harare and there is one in every regional town or centre of any size. ****

I do fully admit to NOT knowing every South African law ; however, this woman's husband was put in jail, prior to Madela's ascention, for being a Rhodesian journalist, who wouldn't accept black rule after independece in Rohdesian ... in South Africa ? I am SO confused. There just has to be something more to this / left out of this article. I am going to be asking some South Africans what this is all about !

Does anyone understand this ?

No, I found a clearer explination, on another thread, before FR went to this absolutely HORRIBLE new format.

Her husband evidently moved to South Africa, after Mugabe took over and Rhodesian became Zimbabwe. Once in South Africa, he worked for a a lefty paper ( the article didn't cal it that, but I know that it is one ) . and through the '70's and '80's fiercely pushed for ... BACK RULE ! Now, she moves from a safer country, albeit one whose black president is a COMMIE, a dear dear pal of Mugabe, and one who wishes to implant the same crude on RAS, to a far worse one, and gets thrown into jail. She can rot, for all I care. She's a crazy !

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