The first full account of the police action that left Zimbabwe’s opposition leader and 14 colleagues undergoing treatment for serious injuries was given by a party official yesterday.

Morgan Tsvangirai had a brain scan to check on a suspected fractured skull, the results of which were expected to be known today. He also has a broken wrist and hand, an enlarged pupil and extensive bruising on the back and face, hospital officials said. Most of the others had operations on severe injuries.

As scores of riot police raided the headquarters of the Movement for Democratic Change in central Harare, Mr Tsvangirai’s spokesman, William Bango, described the party leader’s three-day ordeal.

He said that more than 50 opposition officials and supporters were arrested on Sunday when they approached a prayer meeting organised by church groups in Highfield township, a teeming, volatile area southwest of the city.

Police who had sealed off the township corralled them in a courtyard in the main police station. “Suddenly a horde of riot police stormed the area. We were all made to lie face down in rows. Then the beatings started,” he said. The police used iron rods, rubber truncheons and wooden batons and kicked the prone victims.

“They hit me on the back of the head with an iron rod so hard the blow smashed my face into the earth floor and broke the frame of my spectacles,” he said. “They beat me about the ribcage. I thought it was going to collapse. They hit me across the back and buttocks. At first we screamed but afterwards you just grunt with the blow.”

The assailants worked in relays, four at a time, to allow for rests. “I couldn’t see what was going on, but whenever someone new took over, you could feel the force was much stronger,” he said.

Among the group was a young amputee, picked up on the street for protesting at policemen who was attacking people at random. “They went after him in the courtyard. They beat him on the stump of his leg. He was screaming. He went ballistic.”

They also beat Elton Mangoma, the treasurer of Mr Tsvangirai’s faction of the MDC, who has a leg withered by childhood polio. “They smashed his ankle,” Mr Bango said.

One of Mr Tsvangirai’s bodyguards, who is sick with Aids, attracted the attackers’ attention when he vomited. “They shouted, ‘He’s drunk’, and they hammered him.”

Two women officers targeted Dekai Holland, a 65-year-old grandmother, and Grace Kwinjeh, both members of the MDC’s national executive, who were lying on either side of Mr Bango. The officers shouted obscenities at Mrs Holland, who is married to a white Australian, accusing her of being “Tony Blair’s cousin”, and abusing her for “eating with a white man”.

Hospital sources said yesterday that Mrs Holland had undergone surgey and was “very sick”.

“It was all Mugabe’s propaganda they were shouting,” Mr Bango said. “These people really believe it.”

Soon after after the beatings began, Mr Bango was ordered to throw out his mobile telephone. As he reached into his pocket, he saw Mr Tsvangirai being thrown into the courtyard. He learnt afterwards that the MDC leader had come to the police station to find out why his colleagues had been arrested. He was dragged out of his car and beaten, with his driver, and then pulled into the courtyard.

“They were beating him and he collapsed. They were going for his head. He didn’t scream or shout, he was silent as they beat him, and it made them so angry, they were shouting, ‘We must make him cry’.”

The assault started at 10.15am and stopped at about 1pm. “We were told to get up and get on to a truck outside. There was a huge pool of blood in the yard,” Mr Bango said.

They spent the rest of the day, alternately lying face down on the blazing hot metal of the lorry being driven around the township while police fired teargas at random, or lying face down in the sun at Harare central police station, before being distributed to police stations all round the city. They were given no water, food or medical attention until they reached court on Tuesday morning — apart from Mr Tsvangirai, who was taken to a government hospital to have a deep laceration to his head stitched.

Those treated and discharged from hospital on Tuesday night were allowed to go home, and ordered to return to the court in the morning. When they arrived yesterday, court officials had no idea what to do with them, Eric Mtinenga, a lawyer, said.

Later the police guard over the injured victims in the hospital was withdrawn. “As far as we are concerned, they are all free men,” he said.

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