Three Zimbabwean activists who were dramatically arrested last month after being forced off a plane have been denied bail on the eve of a high-level international summit in the country.
Robson Chere, Namatai Kwekweza and Samuel Gwenzi were charged with disturbing the peace for allegedly protesting outside a court in June against the arrest of dozens of opposition supporters.
The judge ruled that the defendants were likely to flee, commit further crimes and cause public distress, according to the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR).
A lawyer for the trio said the trio were detained for hours without access to legal counsel and tortured shortly after their arrest.
The three were on their way to the Zimbabwean resort of Victoria Falls to attend a conference when they were taken off the domestic flight.
Mr Chere, the head of a teachers’ union, wore bloodstained clothes and limped in pain at his first court appearance earlier this month.
Women’s rights activist Kwekweza says she was not even in the country at the time of the alleged crime. Her lawyer said at an earlier hearing that a boot was shoved in her mouth during her interrogation.
A lawyer for Mr Gwenzi, a local councillor and human rights activist, had also described how his client’s interrogators had threatened to harm his family.
Human rights experts appointed by the United Nations called for the immediate release of the group and the dropping of all charges against them.
On Saturday, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa will officially assume the chairmanship of southern Africa’s 16-nation regional bloc, the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The summit will be held in the capital Harare in the presence of other heads of state.
More than 160 opposition politicians, activists and trade union leaders have been arrested by Zimbabwean authorities since mid-June, human rights groups said.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say they have found evidence of torture and believe the arrests set a dangerous tone for Sadc’s commitment to human rights under Mnangagwa’s leadership.
In a joint statement, the two human rights groups called on the Sadc leadership to condemn human rights violations in Zimbabwe and to work for the release of those arrested.
According to ZLHR, two politicians from the largest opposition party, Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), were also arrested in recent days.
