Read Ben Freeth's letter to his son

Scarcely an hour before Robert Mugabe was sworn in yesterday for his sixth term as President of Zimbabwe, his henchmen abducted Ben Freeth, a white farmer who documented the pre-election terror in an article for The Times last Monday .

Mr Freeth and his inlaws, Michael and Angela Campbell, 75 and 70, were assaulted and taken from their homes in Chegutu, about 90 miles (150km) west of Harare.

The Campbells’ son, Bruce, responded to an alarm from his parents’ house but the militias of the ruling Zanu (PF) party were already driving out with their three hostages by the time he reached the scene.

A worker told him that the raiders, 14 of them armed, had assaulted his parents and Mr Freeth , before driving off in one of Mr Campbell’s vehicles. “Bruce followed and fired shots to try and stop them, but shots were fired in return,” Justice for Agriculture (JAG), a body pressing for compensation for dispossessed white farmers, said.

“Bruce tried to follow them to the base, but more shots were fired at him, and the road was lined with youth militia, throwing rocks, and he had to withdraw.” Earlier the raiders had beaten Frank Trott, another white farmer, so severely that he had to be taken to hospital. A dairy owned by another white farmer in the area was “ransacked and looted,” JAG reported.

The Campbells and Mr Freeth turned up shortly before midnight, dumped on a nearby farm. Angela had a broken arm.

Mr Campbell’s apparent crime was that he spearheaded the appeal to the SADC tribunal, the region’s multinational court, against farm seizures. “They have been deliberately targeted and the instructions must have come from the very top,” said John Worsely-Worswick, a spokesman for JAG.

Mr Freeth also adopted a high-profile role, shedding light on the beatings and mass intimidation that paved the way for Mr Mugabe’s second-round election victory. The son of an officer, he became an official of the Commercial Farmers’ Union after marrying the Campbells’ daughter, Laura.

He had seen the preelection violence at first hand. In his Times article Mr Freeth gave a vivid account of thepungwe – a political indoctrination meeting – held on his farm. “Almost all Mugabe’s campaigning goes on after dark. The pungwes have spread like a great cancer even to town,” he wrote. A pungwe is compulsory. Those who refuse an invitation will almost certainly be beaten, but many of the people who do attend meet a similar fate.

Mr Freeth reported how polling agents of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change were made to put their foreheads on the ground and lift their whole bodies up on their toes as they shook in the cold. “After some time they were given sticks and had to beat each other.”

The MDC branded the election results “an absolute joke”, a reaction echoed around the world. The Pan-African Parliament observer mission announced its verdict that the elections “were not free and fair” due to intense intimidation.

“The elections did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe,” the observers from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community declared.

Before he was dragged away by the militias Mr Freeth voiced pessimism about the power of such international condemnation. “Dictators like Mugabe do not step down. World leaders tut-tut as the crimes against humanity go on unhindered; but their perpetrators live on and travel the world with impunity.”

Articles Ben Freeth wrote for The Times about his experiences in Zimbabwe

My son, we are staying for your sake

'All Robert Mugabe's campaigning goes on after dark'

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