President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has become the first international figure to be stripped of an honorary degree by a British university.

The Edinburgh University Senate decided at a special meeting yesterday to withdraw the degree it awarded to Mr Mugabe in 1984 for services to education in Africa. A letter will be written to him, asking that the degree be returned.

The decision was taken after the university set up an academic panel to look at events between 1982 and 1984 in Matabeleland, where 20,000 people are thought to have died. The university has said that it knew nothing of the killings at the time of the award.

In the House of Commons Tony Blair said that he “entirely endorsed” the move. Nigel Griffiths, Labour MP for Edinburgh South, who tabled a Commons motion to have the degree withdrawn, said: “It says to all dictators that no matter how reputable a past they have, they are unable to act with barbarity and impunity.”

The Zimbabwe Embassy in London refused to comment.

Tim Goodwin, outgoing president of Edinburgh University Student Association, said: “Robert Mugabe is a well-known, internationally recognised dictator and oppressor of his own people, and I think this has been an embarrassment to the university. I am pleased action is at last being taken.”

Mr Mugabe, 83, was awarded the degree on the recommendation of Lord Carrington, the former Foreign Secretary.

In 1982 Lord Carrington told the university that he had met Mr Mugabe and respected him “for his intellectual qualities and stature as the leader of his country”. Mr Mugabe was presented with his degree in person two years later and described his visit to Edinburgh as a “tremendous occasion”.

At that time Zimbabwe was in turmoil, with mass disappearances, beatings and rapes of villagers. A study by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace published in 1997 blamed the Mugabe Government.

Edinburgh University agreed to set up an investigative panel after the student association raised the issue in November 2005. The panel established that the university had legal powers to recall an honorary degree.

A spokesman said yesterday that the panel had “examined evidence relating to the situation in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, evidence which was not available to the university at the time the degree was conferred”. The Senate had considered the recommendations and agreed unanimously to accept them.

In the United States, the University of Massachusetts and Michigan State University are also considering stripping Mr Mugabe of honorary degrees.

Times Recommends

• No apology for Germany’s own Nazi victims
• Intricate web of fear and hope tying down deal
• Victims remembered a year after Mumbai attacks