Zimbabwean opposition leader taken to court at judge's order

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Police brought the Zimbabwe opposition's No. 2 leader to court Saturday, the first time he has been seen in public since plainclothes officers hustled him off a plane as he returned home.

Police have said Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change, will be charged with treason, which can carry the death penalty.

They had refused to say where he was being held or allow his lawyers to see him since his arrest Thursday, and responded only grudgingly to a High Court judge's order to produce him.

Biti's arrest has added to concerns about a presidential runoff in less than two weeks between Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai and longtime Zim-babwean ruler Robert Mugabe.

Since the March 29 first round of voting, opposition supporters have been attacked, other key opposition figures have been arrested and Tsvangirai's attempts to campaign have been interrupted by police.

Reporters watched as Biti, handcuffed and appearing tense, was brought into Justice Ben Hlatshwayo's court Saturday.

Party spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo called the treason charges "politically motivated."

Opposition lawyer Lewis Uriri said Biti told them he spent the first 24 hours after his arrest Thursday being interrogated at a police station.

Police showed Hlatshwayo an arrest warrant they said a lower court judge had issued earlier this month as justification for holding Biti, Mlilo said. Hlatshwayo said police should bring Biti before the lower court judge Monday and allowed them to return him to jail.

Earlier, according to Uriri, police had told Hlatshwayo they were not sure his order to produce Biti -- issued in response to an opposition request a day earlier -- was genuine. Hlatshwayo then gave police an hour to produce Biti.

The opposition said in a statement that Tsvangirai was again detained by police Saturday as he campaigned in rural Zimbabwe. He and 11 others on his campaign team were stopped at a road block and taken to a police station, where they were held for about five hours before being released, Mlilo said.

"It is clearly impossible to talk about free and fair elections in Zimbabwe and to suggest otherwise is to be clearly blind to the grave harassment, intimidation and violence that the people of Zimbabwe have had to endure over the past few years," the party statement said, calling on Zimbabwe's neighbors to intervene.

Tsvangirai came first in a field of four in the first round of voting, but according to official figures did not win the 50 percent plus one vote required to avoid a runoff.

Police say the treason charge Biti faces stem from a transition document they claim is a blueprint for regime change. He is also accused of spreading false information for releasing the opposition's own tally from the first round of elections -- under Zimbabwean law, only election officials can release results.

Biti was arrested before he could even present his passport after flying home Thursday. He and Tsvangirai had spent most of the time since the first round out of the country, amid fears of an alleged government assassination plot against opposition figures. Tsvangirai returned in late May.

Tsvangirai, who was acquitted of treason in 2004 after a trial that lasted more than a year, says the police claims against Biti are "frivolous."

Also Saturday, Mugabe, addressing a funeral of a retired general, sounded a typically militant campaign note.

"We are prepared to fight for our country, to go to war for it," he said.

In addition to claims of orchestrating violence, Mugabe's government has in recent weeks been accused of using food as a political weapon.

The government ordered independent aid agencies last week to stop work. Mugabe has accused foreign aid agencies of working with the opposition to topple him, but the effect of the crackdown has been to make millions of hungry Zimbabweans even more dependent on his government, just as they are deciding whether to keep him in power.

U.S. officials say that last week security forces confiscated a large U.S. food donation intended for children and gave it to Mugabe supporters.

Mugabe, Zimbabwe's head of government since 1980, was lauded early in his rule for campaigning for racial reconciliation and building the economy. But in recent years, he has been accused of ruining the economy and holding onto power through fraud and intimidation.

The economic slide of what was once the region's breadbasket has been blamed on the collapse of the key agriculture sector after often-violent seizures of farmland from whites.

Mugabe claimed he ordered the seizures, begun in 2002, to benefit poor blacks. But many of the farms went instead to his loyalists.