Agents of Robert Mugabe’s regime are harassing and intimidating Zimbabwean dissidents in Britain in an attempt to silence his political rivals and disrupt vital fundraising for Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Mugabe’s feared security force, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), is waging a highly-organised campaign to terrify the 4,000 MDC members living in the UK.

It involves surveillance, threats against family members in Zimbabwe, menacing late-night phone calls and bogus messages saying that fundraising activities are cancelled or disrupted.

The existence of the campaign was confirmed last night by British security sources, who said the targeting of dissidents and MDC members was stepped up in recent weeks as Mugabe sought to maintain his grip on power. Police are investigating a number of incidents, including an alleged phone call to an MDC member who was told that his parents in Zimbabwe faced eviction unless he stopped criticising Mugabe.

Yesterday, militias loyal to the ruling ZANU PF party roamed Zimbabwean villages and towns to press-gang MDC supporters into voting for Mugabe in the discredited second round of the presidential election. The European Union described the vote as a “sham”.

But while the brutal treatment that Mugabe’s followers have meted out in his own country in recent weeks, with the deaths of at least 80 people, has provoked international condemnation, tactics designed to instil fear and panic have been deployed out of the public gaze against the 20,000 Zimbabweans living in Britain. MDC officials said a key target of the CIO operation appeared to be the money between £5,000 and £10,000 a month, which was being sent from the UK to back Tsvangirai’s campaign until he withdrew from the ballot last week. With inflation in Zimbabwe running at three million per cent, hard cash is vital to buy campaign essentials such as fuel and printing supplies.

Tendai Goneso, treasurer of the MDC’s UK and Ireland branch, said: “It is a highly-organised and co-ordinated campaign to intimidate members and interrupt our ability to send money to support the presidential campaign. Mugabe has exported the methods he has used against Zimbabweans at home to the heart of the former colonial power.

“The money was very important for enabling us to keep Tsvangirai campaigning. We can buy 10,000 litres of fuel each month and send regular consignments of mobile phones, and that is what they are trying to stop. An investigation by The Independent, corroborated by British security sources, found a range of strategies used to disrupt and coerce Mugabe’s opponents, many of them asylum-seekers who feel unable to complain to British authorities.

(Source)