African Briefs

Zim cops detained 300, says AI HARARE – Amnesty International said on Friday Zimbabwe police had indiscriminately detained over 300 people last week and randomly beaten people in a crackdown on gangs in the capital.

The arrests in Harare came amid high tensions between security forces and violent gangs of mini-bus touts who enjoyed relative impunity because of their ties with President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, Amnesty said.
Police were “roaming the streets, carrying out random beatings and whippings, which is absolutely unacceptable,” said Noel Kututwa, southern Africa director for the London-based human rights group.

Bashir meets Mursi in Cairo
CAIRO  – Sudan’s President Omar Bashir met on Sunday with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo, defiant of the International Criminal Court’s two arrest warrants against him for an alleged role in his country’s turbulent western Darfur region.
The visit underlines a renewed interest in cooperation between the two neighbours, after what many saw as a period of neglect in the years before Egypt’s new Islamist President Mohamed Mursi was elected this summer.
Relations largely deteriorated after former President Hosni Mubarak accused Sudan of harbouring those suspected of being behind an assassination attempt against him in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 1995.
Prior to the trip, London-based Amnesty International called on Cairo to withdraw its invitation to the Sudanese leader or arrest him on arrival, but Egypt does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction and instead welcomed Bashir at the airport with a delegation led by Vice President Mahmoud Mekki.

Uganda frees play producer on bail
KAMPALA – Uganda released a British theatre producer on bail yesterday after he was arrested last week for staging a play about a gay man without proper authorisation, his lawyer said.
Producer David Cecil – who faces up to two years in jail if found guilty – was charged on Thursday with two counts including one of “disobeying lawful orders” and sent to prison pending Monday’s bail hearing.
“He has now been granted bail and is being released,” John Francis Onyango, Cecil’s lawyer, told AFP, adding that bail had cost around 200 dollars.
Onyango said that Cecil was in good condition following his brief time in prison, and had been ordered to appear back in court in around a month’s time.
Cecil, 34, must seek special authorisation from the court if he wants to leave the country.

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