Police search opposition headquarters

Police carrying warrants to search for weapons on Thursday raided the headquarters and other branch offices in the capital, Harare, of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the party said in a statement.

“In a bizarre response to Monday night’s attack on the MDC’s Fife Avenue headquarters, the police this morning raided the party’s three Harare offices,” the statement said referring to a grenade attack in which vehicles and windows were damaged, but no-one hurt. “In the early hours of this morning, units of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and members of the CID arrived at the MDC offices in Fife Avenue, Eastgate and St Martins with warrants authorising them to search for ‘arms of war - grenades, pistols, rifles, tearbombs’.”

The MDC said no weapons of any type had been found, and it accused police of exceeding the terms of their warrants by attempting to seize party documents. When party lawyers intervened to stop the process, the authorities applied for new search warrants, it said. The party said it had lodged an urgent application to have the police removed from its premises, and said MDC parliamentarians would demand an immediate end to its “harassment” of the MDC and that the police stop acting “as an arm” of the ruling party.

MDC Secretary Secretary General Welshman Ncube said that in the past 20 years the ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe “has consistently abused its powers and used violent and unlawful means to maintain its hold on power. The actions we have seen this morning are almost identical to the strategy employed by the ruling party against Joshua Nkomo and his ZAPU party in 1985”.