Farai Maguwu, the Marange diamonds watchdog who was arrested last Thursday was formally charged by police in Harare on Monday. One of his lawyers, Trust Maanda, said the activist is yet to appear in court.

He is being charged under the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act for allegedly communicating information, via email, that is prejudicial to the State.
A source said it’s believed the police are accusing the activist of sending information via email to exiled human rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba and an Anton Dekker, from the Netherlands. This would mean that his emails have been monitored and intercepted.
Maguwu is the Director of the Centre for Research and Development and has been monitoring rights abuses at the Chiadzwa diamond fields in Manicaland. He was forced into hiding after his house was raided by the police and his relatives arrested and assaulted.
His lawyer said the police have not made reference to the recent meeting Maguwu had with the Kimberley Process monitor, Abbey Chikane.  In an interview with SW Radio Africa last week Maguwu said he suspected he was set up by the KP monitor, shortly after their confidential meeting.
Lawyers had hoped their client would have been granted bail by now since he handed himself to the police voluntarily. But the activist was moved from Mutare to Harare on Sunday and is being held at Rhodesville Police Station, where MDC-T MP Ian Kay is also being held.
Kay, who is the MDC-T MP for Marondera, was arrested last week for allegedly ‘distributing expired and unregistered medicines to three clinics in his constituency’. He was picked up at his house in Harare during a raid by the police who said they were looking for drugs and unlicensed firearms.
MDC-T legislator, Eliah Jembere from the Epworth constituency, was also arrested on Saturday for allegedly ‘insulting the Office of the President’. Jembere was arrested at an MDC rally in Shamva, together with Gilbert Kagodora, the party’s provincial treasurer for Mashonaland Central.
MDC-T spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said his party is ‘witnessing a very disturbing and destabilising trend of MDC members and leaders being victimised using very flimsy and unwarranted excuses by colleagues in ZANU PF’.  
Chamisa also confirmed that the police ransacked Kay’s home, claiming they were looking for ‘pornographic materials and expired drugs, and that the other two were arrested shortly after Jembere addressed a rally on the constitution making process in Shamva.
He said that recently several MDC MPs, including Makoni South MP Pishai Muchauraya and Glen View MP Paul Madzore, have been summoned to court on similar charges of insulting Robert Mugabe. Senator Morgan Komichi has been taken to the courts for allegedly singing a song at a rally in January that insulted Mugabe.
Chamisa said: “It’s not just MPs but also ordinary MDC members who are being threatened. There is new wave of violence that is almost at par with what happened in June of 2008.”
The spokesperson said there is an increase in violence and cases of harassment because of the forthcoming constitution outreach programme, which starts across the country this month.

By SW radio