JURIST - Paper Chase: Zimbabwe president accuses opposition candidate of treason

[JURIST] Current Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe [BBC profile, JURIST news archive] and his Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) [party website] Thursday accused opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai [BBC profile] of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) [party website, in English] of treason. Mugabe's government has said that Tsvangirai and Britain are conspiring to overthrow Mugabe; Tsvangirai denied the accusations in an AP interview. AP has more.

In a CNN interview [text] Thursday, Tsvangirai called for the UN to establish a criminal court to try those responsible for violence in the wake of Zimbabwe's contested March 29th presidential election [JURIST report]. Independent observers say that Tsvangirai won more votes than Mugabe, but Mugabe is demanding a recount [JURIST report]. The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) [official website] has not yet released the official results because of "errors and miscalculations" in their compilation, despite an attempt [JURIST report] by the MDC to force ZEC to release election results. Zimbabwean police banned all political rallies [JURIST report] last week as tensions continued to mount and earlier this week, police arrested more than 50 MDC members [JURIST report] after the party called for a strike to protest the nondisclosure of the election results.

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