In an interview with CAJ News by telephone, Tsvangirai’s lawyer Alec Muchadehama said the MDC leader was picked around 4am this morning, but was released after about 5 hours.
“They (police) picked him at his Strathaven home around 4 am today. He has been released now,” Muchedehama said.
“What is surprising is that no charge have been laid against him,” he said.
His detention came after his party planned to push ahead with today’s rally despite being handed a prohibition order by the police.
In a bid to prevent MDC supporters converging in downtown Harare, police mounted road blocks on all major highways leading into the capital.
The opposition say they have been given initial approval to stage the march after consultations with the police only for the authorities to renege on the agreement on Monday.
Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested Wednesday in a pre-dawn police raid on his home ahead of his planned Freedom March, with President Mugabe defying international outrage and setting himself on a collision course with fellow African leaders.
The 83-year-old President returned home from an annual holiday in Malaysia last week in his battered-looking Air Zimbabwe aircraft in an uncompromising mood, first quashing an internal rebellion by discontented elements in his deeply divided Zanu (PF) who were on the verge of forming a splinter party.
He has now set his eyes on the opposition ahead of an election he must win at all cost.
Critics immediately said the arrest of Tsvangirai was a direct consequence of the failure of South Africa President Thabo Mbeki’s mediation and SADC’s softly-softly policy toward Mugabe’s “increasingly despotic rule.”
Soon after his return from his annual holiday, Mugabe rescinded a consent order earlier issued by the police for the opposition party to proceed with the Freedom March, called to demand free and fair elections.
He had earlier reshuffled the top police commissioners and assigned his nephew Innocent Matibiri to be in charge of Operations, a police arm expected to coordinate security issues surrounding the crucial 2008 vote.
The MDC has vowed it will proceed with the Freedom March and would defy the ban.
“The march is going ahead as planned,” MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told The Zimbabwean Wednesday morning. “The arrest of our president is an act of panic by a paranoid regime. Plans for the New Zimbabwe Freedom March are on course and MDC supporters will gather at Harare gardens at 11:45am. We are not worried about illegal threats and bans,” Chamisa said.
Tsvangirai’s lawyer Alec Muchadehama said: “The police are still not giving us access to him.” He said the opposition leader had been transferred from Avondale Police Station to Harare Central Police Station.
Chamisa said the police actions had clearly shown that the government has failed the “sincerity test” and that Mugabe had shown contempt for President Mbeki and SADC.
Mugabe’s latest antics give credence to reports that he is not prepared to make any significant concessions that would dilute his power during talks between his ruling Zanu (PF) and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Details of a Politburo meeting held in September, which set down rules of engagement and parameters of the talks, reveal Mugabe’s reluctance to reciprocate the MDC’s goodwill. Mugabe told his deputies that whatever will be agreed on at the talks with the MDC, “does not hurt us at all”
Mugabe’s hitherto undisclosed position means Zanu (PF) has been negotiating in bad faith all along despite its efforts to appear as if it was genuinely engaging the MDC in talks in SA to end Zimbabwe’s meltdown.
Diplomatic pressure has had little effect on Mugabe, who contemptuously snubbed President Mbeki during his visit to Harare last week Thursday in a last-ditch attempt to broker a peace deal between the opposition MDC and Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF) party.
“Mugabe’s ferocious attack against his pro-democracy opponent is an apparently calculated snub to the increasing concerns of his neighbours,” said political commentator Ronald Shumba. “He is simply saying to SADC, go to hell, to hell with the talks. His eyes are firmly trained on the elections now.”
He said the arrest of Tsvangirai marked the start of a vicious State-sanctioned crackdown aimed at cowing the opposition through arrests, beatings and harassment ahead of the 2008 election.
It remains unclear if MDC supporters would defy police and march in solidarity with their arrested leader.
As early as 5am, heavily armed riot police had been deployed across the city centre and police had sealed off some streets in the centre of Harare, while water canons were patrolling the streets in an unprecedented show of force.
MDC elections secretary Ian Makone told The Zimbabwean by phone at 4:30 am that Tsvangirai had been seized from his home at 3am in a pre-dawn raid by group of up to 20 Law and Order Department detectives, who also ransacked his study and home.
The police were not immediately available to comment on the arrest of Tsvangirai.
But chief police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena warned the MDC Tuesday against proceeding with the march claiming it was a security threat. He questioned the motive of the MDC’s Freedom March because “it is not in the interest of public security.”
There are growing signs of anger among Zimbabwe’s neighbours that a “failed state” in southern Africa could wreck the region’s nascent economic recovery.
Mbeki this week sought the intervention of the chairman of the Troika for the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, to help break the political logjam between Zanu (PF) and the MDC
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