The Zimbabwean pastor who fled to the US after arrest for high profile protest against President Robert Mugabe, has been arrested on his return home.
Evan Mawarire was arrested at Harare airport on Wednesday and is presently being detained at Harare Central Police Station. The The Guardian reported his lawyer Harrison Nkomo as saying he has been charged with subverting a constitutionally elected government.
A police spokeswoman, Charity Charamba, said that the arrest was for an outstanding warrant. "He skipped the country but, as you know, going to America was never going to wash away his crimes. We were waiting for him to return," she said.
Mawarire founded the #ThisFlag movement as a protest against conditions in the Zimbabwe, which has suffered economic collapse under President Robert Mugabe's rule. Zimbabwe's conditions included mass unemployment, widespread corruption and the disintegration of education and health services.
The #ThisFlag movement dominated social media, and became one of the largest protests the country had seen in years. Mawarire was initially arrested for inciting public violence, but was released after police attempted to change his charges, and Mawarire's lawyers argued that he had not been given a fair trial.
Mawarire received several death threats and a personal attack from Mugabe, who said that Mawarire was a foreign government-sponsored fake, who did not "speak biblical truth". The pastor then left for the US, to consider his "next move".
During his six-month stay in the US, he said that "the day-to-day life of a Zimbabwean has become very, very difficult in the sense that we live as destitutes in our own country". He said that "as a pastor there was never going to be a running away from the political situation in Zimbabwe" and said that "our voice as the Church is the game-changing voice in Zimbabwe's future".
Amnesty International's deputy regional director for Southern Africa, Muleya Mwananyanda, said in response to Mawirire's arrest: "The trumped-up charge of subversion brought against Pastor Evan Mawarire this afternoon is absolutely ridiculous and a total sham.
"Coming after a similar charge against him last year, it is designed to make him stop his human rights activism and to punish him for speaking out about the declining human rights situation in Zimbabwe."
As Voice of America Zimbabwe reported, Amnesty International said that the pastor must be released imminently, "as he is a prisoner of conscience imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of his rights".
