{{Zimbabwe’s top rights lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, released by a court after eight days in jail for allegedly obstructing justice, said Monday her arrest was a ploy to intimidate human rights activists and pro-democracy groups ahead of upcoming elections expected in July.}}<\/p>\n
A visibly tired Beatrice Mtetwa walked from the High Court in Harare in the company of two colleagues and her lawyer after her release papers took several hours to complete. <\/p>\n
She told reporters she believed she had been targeted by police.
\n“It is a personal attack on all human rights lawyers but I was just made the first example. There will be many more arrests to follow as we near elections,” Mtetwa said. <\/p>\n
“The police were all out to get me. They wanted me to feel their might and power because I call myself a human rights lawyer and I felt it.”<\/p>\n
Mtetwa was arrested on March 17 along with four officials from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party. <\/p>\n
The officials are accused of illegally compiling information on high level corruption and are schedule to appeal for bail on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Mtetwa was accused of shouting at police officers who were conducting a search at Tsvangirai’s staff offices when she demanded to see a search warrant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Zimbabwe’s top rights lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, released by a court after eight days in jail for allegedly obstructing justice, said Monday her arrest was a ploy to intimidate human rights activists and pro-democracy groups ahead of upcoming elections expected in July.}} A visibly tired Beatrice Mtetwa walked from the High Court in Harare in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6745"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6745"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}