Land Grab: Zimbabwe's Farm Policy Hits Whites and Blacks, But Blacks Suffer the Worst***A supporter of Zimbabwe's opposition MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) party, Mugagwa says he came to Harare for medical treatment after being arrested and tortured by local policemen. "It happened on July 14, when the police came to my house to fetch me because I supported the MDC," Mugagwa told ABCNEWS.com in a phone interview. "While we were on the way to the police station, they produced a pistol and told me to get out and fall on the ground and started to beat my buttocks and legs and feet with their batons and asked me for the names of MDC people."
Along with a group of other MDC supporters, Mugagwa says he was taken to the Buhera police station, where they were severely beaten over a period of three days. The police accused the men of torching a local official's hut, a charge the men deny and insist is politically trumped up. A court hearing is scheduled for October. But as reports of arrests and torture incidents in the area mounted, Mugagwa says he was forced to flee to Harare, where he is staying in a safe house run by the Amani Trust, a Zimbabwean-based aid agency. For the moment, he's safe. But his troubles are far from over. More than a month after his imprisonment, Mugagwa says he is unable to work or even sit since his buttocks and genitals are sore from the baton beatings he received.***