A leading Zimbabwean human rights activist was seized yesterday by suspected secret police, in the most high level abduction operation yet by President Mugabe’s government.

Fifteen armed men in civilian clothing burst into the home of Jestina Mukoko, the executive director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, in the small town of Norton 40km west of Harare at 5am, lawyers said.

“They assaulted her caretaker and took her away,” said Abel Chikomo of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. Her teenage son watched the incident, and reported to lawyers.

The project has catalogued incidents of violence and human rights abuses for the last eight years, and Ms Mukoko ran a network of hundreds of monitors throughout the country who provided detailed and reliable accounts of the campaigns of brutality carried out by the government under Mr Mugabe. She is the most senior person to have been kidnapped yet.

“Her work was extremely valuable,” said a human rights activist who asked not to be named. “Thanks to the Peace Project, there is now a detailed record of thousands of incidents of murder, assault, torture, arson and so on, and who the perpetrators are."

“They had just shifted from cataloguing violence, to abuse of food aid by the government, forcing people to support Mugabe or starve to death,” said a human rights lawyer. “It was going to be extremely embarrassing. It’s clear the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation, Mr Mugabe’s secret police) want to stop it.”

It is the second serious kidnapping in over a month, after a suspected government hit squad seized 14 MDC activists – as well as the two year-old daughter of one of them – from the town of Banket 100 km north of Harare. Witnesses saw them being taken by police officers who have been identified.

The government initially claimed they were involved in training “insurgents” against Mr Mugabe’s government, but now denies they are in official custody.

The 15 have not been seen alive since they were seized 36 days ago, and police have ignored court orders for them to be produced in court.

Police violently broke up separate demonstrations in Harare by the national trade union movement, demanding that the central bank lift limits on the amount people can draw from their bank accounts, and by health workers, pressing for “a safe working environment” in the midst of the country’s cholera epidemic.

Thirty-eight unionists were arrested in Harare, and another 26 in other centres around the country.

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