Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe rules with the cruelty reminiscent of Uganda's Idi Amin added with a dash of the kleptomania of Gabon's lesser-known Omar Bongo.
One of the overlooked stories of the WikiLeaks scandal is the "outing" of one of Mugabe's democratic-minded political opponents--who may end up being executed because of Julian Assange's recklessness and imperiousness.
Speaking on the Today Show about the possibility that local sympathizers to the NATO effort in Afghanistan could become collateral damage, Assange said, "If we had, in fact, made that mistake then of course that would be something we would take very seriously."
In an op-ed in Britain's Guardian, James Richardson writes that Morgan Tsvangirai might end up paying for Assange's sins with his life. You can't get more serious than that.
[Tsvangirai's] numerous arrests and brushes with death began in 1997, when he emerged as the unlikely face of opposition to President Robert Mugabe. That year, Mugabe's henchmen nearly threw Tsvangirai from the window of his tenth floor office. He would be arrested on four separate occasions in the years to follow. During one such arrest, in 2007, he was severely beaten and tortured by Zimbabwean special forces at the behest of the ruling political party.WikiLeaks cables show that Tsvanirai, who publicly denounced international sanctions against the southern African nation, praised them in private when discussing them with western diplomats. Mugabe's appointed attorney general is investigating Tsvangirai, and if he is found guilty of treason--not an unreasonable possibility--he will face the death penalty. Lethal injection probably won't be used. The wife of one Mugabe opponent was burned alive--shortly after a hand and both of her feet were amputated.
After Zimbabwe's 2008 presidential contest – featuring incumbent Mugabe, Tsvangirai and independent Simba Makoni – failed to award any candidate with the majority necessary to claim victory, the election defaulted to a runoff between the two highest vote-getters, Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
In the days succeeding the first round of balloting, Tsvangirai was the alleged target of an assassination plot and subsequently taken into the custody of Mugabe's police, for which American and German diplomats demanded his immediate release. After initially committing to pursuing a second challenge to Mugabe, Tsvangirai withdrew in protest, lambasting the election as a "violent sham" in which his supporters were risking their lives to cast ballots in his favour. Indeed, it is estimated that over 100 MDC supporters met an untimely demise in the period following the election.
Following intense negotiations, the two parties agreed in February 2009 to a coalition government, in which Mugabe would remain head of state – a post he had held uninterrupted for 30 years – and Tsvangirai would assume the premiership. Not one month later, Tsvangirai and his wife were involved in a suspicious collision with a lorry. Though the prime minister survived, his wife for 31 years died.
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