Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal was thrown into crisis yesterday after a court ordered the detention of a senior official in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and said he should stand trial for terrorism.

Roy Bennett, a minister-designate in the unity Government headed by the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, appeared in court in the eastern town of Mutare. He was immediately detained and led away by police after the magistrate, Lucy Mungwari, ruled that there was a case to answer.

“He has been indicted. The natural consequence is he will be in custody until he makes a bail application in the High Court,” Chris Mutangadura, the State Prosecutor, said.

Mr Bennett, who was nominated to serve as a deputy agriculture minister, was arrested in February on the same day as the new Cabinet was sworn in. He was charged with possessing arms for sabotage and plotting terrorism but released on bail in March.

His detention created tensions between Mr Tsvangirai and President Mugabe, whose Zanu (PF) party has been accused of trying to derail the deal painstakingly negotiated after rigged elections last year.

Mr Bennett, an outspoken Mugabe critic whose farm was confiscated under the President’s land reform programme, denies the charges against him. They are linked to long-discredited, even slightly comical, charges that the MDC was planning the violent overthrow of the Government.

Yesterday’s ruling comes at a time when Mr Mugabe was showing signs of softening his stance after secret diplomatic talks with Western powers to lift economic sanctions. In the first official contact for years, a European Union team visited Harare last month. When Mr Mugabe opened Parliament a few weeks later, he refrained from his habitual attack on Western imperialists and spoke in almost warm tones of his hopes for improved ties. He was also in conciliatory mood at the recent UN General Assembly in New York.

Political analysts are worried that Mr Bennett’s renewed detention forms part of a backlash by Zanu (PF) hardliners who fear that better ties with the West could hasten their fall from power. “The hardliners are calling the shots and are keen to derail the power-sharing Government. Bennett is a pawn in a complex political game,” said Buchizya Mseteka, a Johannesburg-based political analyst. “Many also detest Bennett and would like to secure a conviction in a court of law and thus bar him from occupying political office.”

Mr Bennett, who once dismissed Bob Geldof’s Live8 initiative to raise money for the Third World as “Mercs for jerks”, has long been a thorn in the side of the ruling clique. He was first elected as an opposition MP in 2000 for the rural — and nearly 100 per cent black — constituency of Chimanimani near the border with Mozambique. He captured the seat despite brutal intimidation, which included his pregnant wife being punched. She later miscarried.

In 2004, he was jailed for contempt after pushing Patrick Chinamasa, then a notoriously corrupt Justice Minister, to the ground during a heated debate about land reform. Mr Chinamasa subjected Mr Bennett to a torrent of racist abuse and called his ancestors thieves and murders, after the MP repeatedly asked how many confiscated farms he now owned.

In 2006, Mr Bennett fled to South Africa after he was linked to an alleged plot to assassinate Mr Mugabe. The plot was discredited after it was shown that crucial tape recordings had been doctored and that the person making the allegations was on the government payroll.

The charges were, surprisingly, reinstated when Mr Bennett returned to the country last year.

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