A group of British and American diplomats were detained at gunpoint in Zimbabwe today after being stopped at a police roadblock.
| Perhaps one of the experts on international diplomacy at the Daily Kos or TalkLeft can tell us the proper protocol for arresting diplomats ... |
US officials said that five Americans and four Britons have been held for some five hours after their convoy was stopped in Bindura. The White House denounced the Zimbabwean action as an "outrageous" and "completely unacceptable" attack.
Details of the incident are unclear but the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee - who was himself briefly detained with other diplomats last month - gave some details to CNN in a telephone interview from Harare.
"My people were stopped, detained," he said. "The police put up a roadblock, stopped the vehicles, slashed the tires, reached in and grabbed the telephones from my personnel. And the war veterans threatened to burn the vehicles with my people inside unless they got out of the vehicles and accompanied the police to a station nearby."
Mr McGee said that any dispute with the diplomats should have been taken up with the ministry of foreign affairs. "Instead in this lawless society that we call Zimbabwe the police decided to take action into their own hands and detaining my people for almost five hours now," he said.
A Foreign Office spokesman in London was unable to confirm the news, saying only: "We are urgently investigating these reports." |