Editor charged with defamation, journalist attacked

Geoff Nyarota, the Editor-in-Chief of Zimbabwe’s independent ‘Daily News’, was on Wednesday charged with criminal defamation for the second time in a month, the newspaper reported on Thursday. The charge arose from the publication of reports that Evelyn Masaiti, the MP for Mutasa, and three relatives of some victims of the June parliamentary election violence sued President Mugabe in the United States last year.

Nyarota arrived at Harare Central police station soon after the arrival of a five-person delegation from the US-based World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC). The delegation is in Zimbabwe on a mission to study conditions in the country. The delegates held a meeting with information and minister Jonathan Moyo.

Meanwhile, ‘The Standard’ reported that one of the newspaper’s correspondents was attacked last week by ZANU-PF youths in Ruwa - a small town 30 km outside Harare. The journalist, Samuel Mungadze, was investigating claims that people in the surrounding farms were being forced to attend independence celebrations held at the Ruwa Rehabilitation Centre. The assailants who attacked Mungadze accused him of reporting for a newspaper that they deemed to be anti-government.