Zimbabwe opposition official is released

JOHANNESBURG - Zimbabwean authorities released a prominent opposition official, Roy Bennett, yesterday, a day after the Supreme Court granted him bail.

Bennett, who is treasurer of the Movement for Democratic Change, was arrested last month on revived terrorism charges the very day he was to be sworn in as deputy agriculture minister in the new power-sharing government. His case is viewed by many as a test of whether the nation is moving back toward the rule of law.

For more than three weeks, prosecutors resisted court rulings that granted bail to Bennett, and even after the Supreme Court decision, he was forced to spend another night in his prison cell in the eastern city of Mutare.

"The conditions were absolutely horrific, a human rights disaster," he said in a telephone interview. "People are skeletal as if they were in a concentration camp. Five people died in the cells while I was there, and sometimes they didn't collect the corpse for four days."

He said he shared a cell with 11 others in a space designed for six. "Prisoners are full of sores, and there is a terrible infestation of lice because no one can wash with soap," Bennett said.

Agents arrested Bennett on Feb. 13, originally charging him with treason. That allegation was dropped in favor of three-year-old accusations concerning weapons possession and a plot to use the arms against the state.

Bennett denies the charges, and his lawyers say that the case was built on the tainted testimony of someone who now claims that incriminating lies were extracted from him through torture. A crucial ally of the recently installed prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, Bennett is despised by many insiders loyal to President Robert Mugabe.

"I'm not sure where these charges come from but there are obviously still people in the government who have not received the power-sharing arrangement with any spirit of reconciliation," said Bennett.

He said he suspected his arrest was orchestrated by minister of justice Patrick Chinamasa, a longtime ally of Mugabe's. "He still bears a grudge against me for pushing him down in Parliament," he said.

In 2004, Bennett, then a member of Parliament, was sent to jail for eight months after he shoved Chinamasa and then wrestled him to the assembly floor during a heated exchange about land reform.