Lusaka
\nZambian authorities on Thursday defied a court order stopping them from deporting top Zimbabwe Opposition figure Tendai Biti, handing him to police across the border, his lawyer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have defied the court order to allow him to seek asylum and as I am speaking to you right now he has been handed over to the Zimbabwean police,\u201d lawyer Gilbert Phiri told AFP.<\/p>\n
Biti, a veteran figure in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), fled to Zambia yesterday claiming asylum, reportedly facing charges at home of inciting post-election violence.<\/p>\n
Zambian authorities swiftly refused him asylum, but Phiri said Biti\u2019s legal team had managed to challenge the decision, keeping Biti in Zambia.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is on the Zimbabwe side,\u201d he confirmed. \u201cThis is really embarrassing.\u201d A hearing at Zambia\u2019s High Court, where Biti was supposed to appear, will go ahead today in his absence, Phiri added.<\/p>\n
The MDC were defeated in last week\u2019s historic first elections since Zimbabwe\u2019s military ousted Robert Mugabe in November, ending 37 years of iron-fisted rule.<\/p>\n
Mugabe\u2019s successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner on Friday by a narrow margin results the opposition has furiously contested, alleging fraud.<\/p>\n
Biti, an internationally-respected finance minister in Zimbabwe\u2019s troubled 2009-2013 power-sharing government, had proclaimed a victory for the opposition before the results came in.<\/p>\n
According to Zimbabwe\u2019s state-run Chronicle newspaper, he is among nine suspects sought for inciting protests over alleged rigging which turned deadly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lusaka Zambian authorities on Thursday defied a court order stopping them from deporting top Zimbabwe Opposition figure Tendai Biti, handing him to police […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38778,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776\/revisions\/38778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}