(Reuters) - Zimbabwe police on Friday charged a
U.S. citizen on suspicion of insulting President Robert Mugabe by
calling him a “selfish and sick man” on Twitter, the first arrest since
the creation of a Ministry of Cyber Security last month, police papers
showed.
Martha O‘Donovan, who works for Magamba
TV, which describes itself as Zimbabwe’s leading producer of political
satire, was picked up in a dawn raid on her Harare home, Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights said in a statement.
In a statement to police seen by Reuters, O‘Donovan said: “I deny the allegations being levelled against me as baseless and malicious. That is all I wish to say.”
Police
raided her home with a search warrant requiring O‘Donovan to give up
her computers, cellphones and other electronic devices.
Police accused the American of posting a message on Twitter last month that read, “we are being led by a selfish and sick man”.
The
police search warrant had shown that central to its investigation was a
post on O‘Donovan’s Twitter feed referring to a “Goblin” whose wife and
step-sons had imported a Rolls Royce, an apparent reference to
93-year-old Mugabe, though he was not named.
If convicted, O‘Donovan faces a maximum of one year in jail, her lawyer said.
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