A further 250 people have been taken to hospital and scores beaten and tortured in police custody, it said. Welshman Ncube, the party's secretary-general, said: "The attempt is to scare and intimidate the MDC leadership. "The government is labouring under the mistaken belief that, because each and every one of us is facing a charge or facing incarceration, the party will retreat from its obligation to organise mass protests against this dictatorship. Zanu-PF has learned nothing though history. They may postpone it, but eventually freedom will come."***