Zimbabwean high court judge ordered police to return 65 photographs seized the from an exhibition meant to portray the brutality of President Robert Mugabe's regime.

Two truckloads of police swooped down on a Harare art gallery and removed the pictures displayed by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Organisation (Zimrights), and which was due to be opened by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who was a long-time opposition leader before entering into an uneasy coalition with Mugabe.

The exhibition was part of a growing campaign by Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change and human rights activists to publicise a history of violence against the MDC over the last decade.

The move was designed to force Mugabe and his cohorts to acknowledge hundreds of murders and thousands of cases of torture, arson and looting of MDC supporters, ending the immunity the perpetrators have enjoyed.

Lawyers say only a handful of perpetrators of those crimes have been prosecuted, despite researchers having compiled detailed reports of thousands of incidents, and handing them to authorities.

The MDC is demanding a truth and reconciliation commission, but Mugabe insists that bygones are bygones.

Organizers had planned to go ahead with the opening by Tsvangirai without the pictures. But the ruling by high court judge Samuel Kudya ordered police to deliver the framed pictures back to Gallery Delta in central Harare within the hour.

Earlier, Irene Petras, director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, said police had told Zimrights that they had not approved the exhibition because there were some nude pictures on display.

Organizers said that police must have been referring to photographs of MDC supporters with their buttocks split open by prolonged beating.

Other pictures showed: Tsvangirai with his head bandaged after assault; police violently breaking up peaceful demonstrations; Mugabe praying; and, finally, members of the power-sharing government between the 86-year-old Mugabe and opposition leader Tsvangirai shortly after it was inaugurated last year.

By AP