Police probe death threat against president

Police in Malawi are investigating an anonymous letter in which death threats were made against President Bakili Muluzi and Commissioner for Disaster Preparedness, Relief and Rehabilitation, Lucius Chikuni. The letter apparently originated from a refugee camp in the central district of Dowa. PANA reported on Thursday that Chikuni said the anonymous letter, postmarked Dowa and post-dated 1 February, was handwritten and in poor English, purportedly from Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa. The letter said in part: "We want to let you know that what happened to mad and stubborn Laurent Kabila of DRC will very soon happen to Bakili and you Chikuni ... Do not doubt." Chikuni said that the government was taking the letter seriously. The hand-written letter, which was addressed to Chikuni and copied to Muluzi, the national police headquarters and the UNHCR headquarters in the Swiss capital, Geneva, alleged that the Malawi government was mistreating the refugees by camping them in a former prison. Dzaleka, which used to be a notorious detention centre where the former one-party state used to jail its political opponents, was closed and turned into a refugee camp by the Muluzi regime.