HARARE, June 5: The US Embassy says a throng of so-called war veterans, a group of fiercely loyal and often violent supporters of President Robert Mugabe, attacked a convoy carrying American and British diplomats on Thursday.
The assault was followed by a standoff of several hours before the diplomats were able to drive on. And it was the latest sign of how tense Zimbabwe is, as Mugabe prepares to face a powerful rival in a runoff presidential election. The opposition and rights groups have accused Mugabe of orchestrating violence to ensure he wins.
Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain and was once hailed as a liberator who promoted racial reconciliation and economic empowerment. But in recent decades, he has been accused of holding on to power through fraud and intimidation, stripping Zimbabweans of political rights and destroying the economy.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai spent nine hours in police detention in southern Zimbabwe on Wednesday evening, his party said. He resumed campaigning on Thursday.
Tsvangirai only returned to Zimbabwe in late May to campaign. He had left the country soon after the first round of voting, in March, and his party has said he was the target of a military assassination plot. He has survived at least three assassination attempts.
Speaking in Washington, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Western diplomats’ experience on Thursday was indicative of the “repression and violence” Zimbabwe’s government is willing to use against its own people.
The US and Britain say their diplomats were attacked as they investigated political violence in Zimbabwe.
US officials in Washington and British officials in London said the diplomats were released after being held for hours at a road block on the outskirts of Harare, the capital, following a trip to northern Zimbabwe.
In Zimbabwe, US Embassy spokesman Paul Engelstad told The Associated Press the attackers beat a Zimbabwean US Embassy staffer and slashed the tyres of some cars in the convoy.
US Ambassador James McGee, who was not with the convoy, told CNN that Zimbabwean police and military officers and so-called war veterans, Mugabe’s fiercest and most fiercely loyal supporters, were responsible for what he called an “illegal action”.
“The war veterans threatened to burn the vehicles with my people inside unless they got out of the vehicles and accompanied the police to a station nearby,” McGee said.
Five Americans, four Britons and three Zimbabweans were in the three-car convoy, he said.
Speaking later in Washington, McCormack said the diplomats were released after being detained and harassed, calling their experience “absolutely outrageous”.
McCormack said the US planned to raise the issue in the UN Security Council and directly with Zimbabwean diplomats attending a UN food conference in Rome.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s spokesman Michael Ellam said British diplomats were safe after being freed.
“The Foreign Office has summoned the Zimbabwean ambassador to explain the situation,” Ellam told reporters.—AP