Zimbabwe: Telegraph reporter held

LONDON, England -- A British newspaper says its Zimbabwe correspondent has become the first journalist to be charged under President Robert Mugabe's new security laws.

Peta Thornycroft, 57, a Zimbabwean citzen and grandmother, was still in custody on Thursday.

The Daily Telegraph said on its Web site that she had been arrested and charged on Wednesday with "publishing false statements likely to be prejudicial to state security" and "incitement to public violence."

The newspaper said that Mrs Thornycroft, a widow with a son, a daughter and granddaughter, was the first journalist to be charged under the public order and security Act since the widely condemned presidential election.

If convicted she faces a one year jail term or a fine of Z$20,000 ($350).

EXTRA INFORMATION In-Depth: Zimbabwe Election 2002

"Her arrest is a sign of growing government paranoia and Mr Mugabe's indifference to international opinion," the Telegraph says.

Zimbabwe officials could not immediately be reached for comment, Reuters reported.

Thornycroft, the Telegraph's Harare correspondent since July, was arrested in Chimanimani, 186 miles (300 km) southeast of the capital, the paper said.

She was investigating reports of a campaign of retribution against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai lost to Mugabe in the election.

Thornycroft, who was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, and moved to Zimbabwe at an early age, arrived in Chimanimani at about noon.

Barely two hours later, before she had completed any reporting, the Telegraph said, she was arrested by four police officers while sitting alone in a cafe.

She was taken to the police station and held for about five hours without any charges being laid.

Officers told Thornycroft that they wanted to contact the information ministry and check the validity of her credentials as a journalist.

Later they told her that she would be charged with the two offences, the paper reported. Thornycroft was then taken to the cells.

Zimbabwe's Public Order and Security Act was introduced ahead of Mugabe's victory in the March 9-11 presidential election, which was condemned as gravely flawed by the British and other Western governments.

"The charges against her are without foundation and are the latest cynical act by a regime intent on crushing anyone who dares to question it," Alec Russell, the Telegraph's foreign editor, was quoted as saying on the website.

Local and foreign media organisations swiftly condemned the arrest and called for Thornycroft's release.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that Robert Mugabe intends to step up his campaign against the media and to restrict even further the flow of information to the people of Zimbabwe and the outside world," the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa said in a statement.

Thornycroft's arrest comes after Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth for a year last week after election observers from the grouping of former British colonies accused Mugabe of electoral fraud.

Zimbabwe's government has dismissed the accusations, saying Western powers want Mugabe ousted because he has seized white-owned farms for distribution to landless blacks.

Earlier this week former Rhodesian premier Ian Smith, who defied the world in 1965 when he declared self-rule from Britain, was denied a new Zimbabwean passport until he renounces his British citizenship.

The Telegraph, owned by Canadian group Hollinger headed by media magnate Conrad Black, is a respected news broadsheet with a right-of-centre editorial stance.

David Blair, the Telegraph's former correspondent in Zimbabwe, was forced to leave the country last June.

A reporter for another British newspaper, The Independent's Basildon Peta, has said he fled Zimbabwe for South Africa last month after being briefly held under the security laws.