The leader of Zimbabwe’s Opposition left court yesterday for hospital treatment on injuries inflicted in police custody, vowing to continue his campaign against President Mugabe.

Morgan Tsvangirai, who heads the biggest faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had severe lacerations to his head with possible internal damage, a suspected fractured hand and deep bruising all over his body.

It was the first time that he had been seen since he was arrested on Sunday after defying a national ban on political rallies. As he came down the steps of Harare Magistrates’ Court, with his checked shirt torn open in the front, a young man in the crowd began defiantly singing God Bless Africa, Southern Africa’s hymn to freedom. Others joined in, fervently. A woman beside me sobbed in rage as she sang.

The full scale of the police violence became apparent as, one by one, 50 opposition leaders and supporters winced down the court steps to be ferried to hospital in a shuttle of seven ambulances.

The first was a young man on a stretcher. The rest followed on crutches, helped down by ambulance attendants, supporting each other. At least one had bloodstained trousers; some were barefoot.

About 300 onlookers, pushed back by riot police, watched, shocked into a silence broken occasionally by angry muttering. Florence Ziyambi, a state lawyer, ordered all those requiring treatment to the ambulances.

Human rights groups have protested that Mr Tsvangirai and others had been tortured in police custody and his treatment has been condemned by Western countries. But most of Zimbabwe’s neighbours were either silent or muted in their concern. South Africa urged the Government to “ensure respect for human rights and leaders of various parties”.

Last night most of the activists, though not Mr Tsvangirai, were taken back to court and then released temporarily. They are to appear in court again today.

Sunday’s action after what the Opposition declared a “prayer meeting” was the second time in three weeks that police had descended on MDC supporters with unrestrained ferocity. One, Gift Tandare, was shot dead at close range in the chest. Scores more were injured and Highfields was sealed off for two days.

The 50 who appeared in court yesterday, mostly picked out as leaders, were taken to befouled police cells around the city and assaulted systematically. They were refused access to lawyers and medical attention, according to supporters.

Relatives who had snatches of conversations in the court said that the leaders told of being forced to lie face down and being beaten again and again over the past three days, in the streets, in police stations, with rubber truncheons and long wooden batons, and being kicked. “Yes, you will be beaten up for sure,” President Mugabe told trade union demonstrators in September.

Since he gave that warning, he has faced a sudden and unexpected tide of defiance and anger over the relentless impoverishment brought on by inflation – now 1,700 per cent – after the past seven years of lawlessness and economic mismanagement.

Mr Mugabe, 83, who has been in power since independence in 1980, appears vulnerable as never before, and has cracked down with characteristic savagery.

“Tsvangirai really asked for the trouble in which he finds himself,” said Nathan Shamuyarira, the ruling Zanu (PF) party’s spokesman. He said that the reports of assault were “an overexaggeration”, and added: “Prisoners are allowed access to medical and legal services. We have observed all the laws a nation should observe.”

“It was pretty damn barbaric,” said Andrew Pocock, the British Ambassador, who watched proceedings in the court. “But if the objective was to cow the MDC, I don’t think they have done it. There is a lot of spirit, and they will need it.”

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