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afrol.com, 5 March - According to a report in the Sunday times of 4 March 2001, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe could face a citizen's arrest on his trip to Europe this week after Britain's Guardian newspaper on Saturday, 3 March 2001, called for his arrest by ordinary people. As pressure increased on the European Union last week to explain its decision to enter into "critical dialogue" with Mugabe, the newspaper called on citizens of France and Belgium - where Mugabe will meet EU leaders - to ask magistrates to issue arrest warrants for the Zimbabwean president pending investigations into human rights abuses, the paper reported. According to the report, the arrest to Mugabe would be the similar to that of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, detained in Britain in 1998 on the order of a Spanish magistrate. This week, in response to a lawsuit against him filed in New York, Mugabe applied for immunity in the US. The Guardian's call came after Zimbabwe's Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay agreed to take early retirement under pressure from Mugabe. Mugabe will meet Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and Danish development commissioner Poul Nielson and France's President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Tuesday, 6 March 2001. Listing Mugabe's human rights abuses, The Guardian blasted the EU for allowing Mugabe to meet its leaders, the Sunday Times reported. Source: Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
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