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Harare: Police brought the Zimbabwe opposition's No 2 leader to court on Friday, the first time he has been seen in public since plainclothes officers hustled him off a plane as he arrived back in the country.
Police have said Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), will be charged with treason, which can carry the death penalty.
They had refused to say where he was being held or allow his lawyers to see him since his arrest Thursday, and responded only grudgingly to a High Court judge's order to produce him.
Biti's arrest has added to concerns about a presidential runoff in less than two weeks between MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and longtime Zimbabwean ruler Robert Mugabe.
The campaign has seen brutal attacks on opposition supporters, arrests of other key opposition figures and repeated interruptions of Tsvangirai's attempts to campaign.
Reporters watched as Biti, handcuffed and appearing tense, was brought into Justice Ben Hlatshwayo's court.
Order
He said "fine" when reporters asked how he was.
Party spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo called the treason charges "politically motivated". Mlilo said Biti's lawyers had no opportunity to speak with him.
Police showed Hlatshwayo an arrest warrant they said a lower court judge had issued earlier this month as justification for holding Biti, Mlilo said.
Hlatshwayo said police should bring Biti before the lower court judge on Sunday and allowed them to return him to jail.
Earlier, according to opposition lawyer Lewis Uriri, police had told Hlatshwayo they were not sure his order to produce Biti - issued in response to an opposition request a day earlier - was genuine. Hlatshwayo then gave police an hour to produce Biti.
The opposition said in a statement that Tsvangirai was again detained by police as he campaigned in rural Zimbabwe.
He and 11 others on his campaign team were stopped at a road block and taken to a police station, where they were held for about five hours before being released, Mlilo said.
"It is clearly impossible to talk about free and fair elections in Zimbabwe and to suggest otherwise is to be clearly blind to the grave harassment, intimidation and violence that the people of Zimbabwe have had to endure over the past few years," the party statement said, calling on Zimbabwe's neighbours to intervene.
On Friday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said he was ready to fight to keep his rival from taking power in this month's run-off vote.
Puppets
"We shall never, never accept anything that smells of ... the MDC. These pathetic puppets taking over this country? Let's see. That is not going to happen," he said in a speech at the funeral of a former army general.
"Should this country be taken by traitors... it is impossible...
"It shall never happen... as long as we are alive and those who fought for the country are alive," the 84-year-old leader said. "We are prepared to fight for our country and to go to war for it."
Mugabe also raised the spectre of war on Friday if Tsvangirai, who officially fell short of an outright majority in the March 29 first round vote, wins the run-off poll on June 27.
The opposition has warned of a campaign of intimidation ahead of the election and claims more than 60 of its supporters have been killed since the March vote.
Mugabe, 84, blames the MDC for the violence that has caused widespread international concern.
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