Authorities return media owner's passport

Zimbabwean authorities on Wednesday returned the passport of the country's only remaining independent publisher after seizing it last week. "The attorney-general's office has conceded that the seizure was unlawful ... the passport is with my lawyer," Trevor Ncube, the Zimbabwean owner and publisher of the Standard and the Independent newspapers in Zimbabwe, and the weekly Mail & Guardian in South Africa, told IRIN. Yet another passport was confiscated by the authorities on Wednesday in the capital, Harare - that of trade unionist Raymond Majongwe, secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers Union and a general council member of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions - when he returned from attending a conference in Nigeria. Last week the passport of prominent opposition member Paul Themba Nyathi was also seized on his arrival in Zimbabwe from South Africa on Friday. Ncube said he had been told his name was on a government list of 17 prominent Zimbabweans whose passports would be confiscated if they travelled back to their homeland. According to the official Sunday Mail newspaper, Zimbabwe recently passed a constitutional amendment giving the government "powers to seize the passports of citizens deemed by the state to be undermining national interests during their travels abroad".