Two Zimbabwean journalists were arrested Friday over a newspaper report that described President Robert Mugabe as “in bad shape” when he flew to Singapore for what officials called a scheduled medical check-up.<\/p>\n
Editor of independent newspaper NewsDay Wisdom Mudzungairi and journalist Richard Chidza were released ahead of a court appearance on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The front-page story said that Mugabe, 93, had “sneaked out of the country” this week, and quoted an unnamed source saying “it’s a tricky health situation”.<\/p>\n
The report, headlined “Mugabe in fresh health scare”, said that first lady Grace Mugabe had flown to Dubai to organise the charter flight.<\/p>\n
“They have been arrested and charged with undermining and insulting the office of the president,” said their lawyer Obey Shava before their release.<\/p>\n
He said their arrest was “in relation to the paper’s lead story”.<\/p>\n
Mugabe’s trip to Singapore, shortly after his lavish 93rd birthday party, was announced by his press spokesman on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The president is expected to return early next week.<\/p>\n
Mugabe’s health has been subject of increased speculation in recent years, and he regularly flies to Singapore for medical attention.<\/p>\n
Despite his advanced age, Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party last year endorsed him as its candidate for the 2018 general elections.<\/p>\n
In recent speeches, he has paused for lengthy periods and mumbled at times.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Zimbabwean journalists were arrested Friday over a newspaper report that described President Robert Mugabe as “in bad shape” when he flew to Singapore for what officials called a scheduled medical check-up. Editor of independent newspaper NewsDay Wisdom Mudzungairi and journalist Richard Chidza were released ahead of a court appearance on Saturday. The front-page story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[562,563],"class_list":["post-298744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-mugabe","tag-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=298744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=298744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=298744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=298744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}