Zimbabwe: Police raid office of election observers; staff in hiding

Amnesty International has just received information that at about 10am (local time), five police officers from the Zimbabwe Republic Police’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID) raided the offices of the Zimbabwe Elections Support Network (ZESN) in Harare.

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Posted 25/04/2008 “The actions taken by the police today are unacceptable,” said Amnesty International. “The Zimbabwean police must stop harassing political and human rights activists immediately and act to protect victims of post-election violence.”

The police had a search warrant signed by the officer in charge of CID Homicide authorizing them to search for “subversive material likely to cause the overthrow of a constitutionally-elected government”.

They are in the process of searching ZESN offices.

The police are now looking for Ms Rindai Chipfunde-Vava, National Director of the ZESN, and Mr. Noel Kututwa, the organization’s chairperson.

Police are believed to have taken Tsungai Kokerai, the ZESN’s ProgrammeManager “to assist with investigations”. They have also removed somefiles.

This morning police also raided the offices of the Movement for DemocraticChange (MDC), Zimbabwe’s main opposition party. An estimated 375 peoplewere reportedly arrested. Among them are people who had taken refugee atthe MDC’s offices after having fled the on-going violence being perpetratedby ZANU-PF supporters and soldiers.

ZESN is a coalition of 38 organisations that was involved in observing the29 March elections. ZESN deployed local observers during the elections.

Source: Amnesty International