More "illegal" journalists arrested in Zimbabwe: state radio

May 27, 2008, 9:18 GMT

Harare - Zimbabwe police have arrested three people, two of them South Africans, in connection with 'illegal broadcasting equipment' for British television network Sky TV, state radio said Tuesday.

It said the three were detained at the weekend in the western city of Bulawayo after finding in a factory in the suburb of Belmont what it described as 'Sky television broadcasting equipment' as well as laptops, computers, disks, tapes and 'a South African-bound car.'

It claimed the three had 'tried to bribe police' with 25, 000 South African rand. The equipment had been in the factory since March 23, a week before elections in March 29. The broadcast gave no further details, and police comment was not available.

President Robert Mugabe's government has cracked down on foreign journalists visiting Zimbabwe without official accreditation.

Journalists for The Times of London, the New York Times and a stringer for Britain's Sunday Telegraph have been arrested. A fourth, a legally accredited photographer for London-based Reuters news agency, is facing charges of having an 'unlicensed' satellite telephone.

Also the weekend, a 14-tonne truck carrying 60,000 copies of the Zimbabwean on Sunday, a London-based newspaper printed in South Africa for Zimbabwean readers, was hijacked by men with automatic rifles and burnt with its cargo, said its editor, Wilf Mbanga.

Zimbabwe, in the midst of economic collapse and a campaign of violent intimidation against supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change ahead of a second round of presidential elections on June 27, maintains fierce control of the media through legislation that carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail for journalists working without state approval.

The New York-based International Committee to Protect Journalists says the regime is one of the world's most hostile governments to the media.