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 across the border, his lawyer said. \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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"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}]}}