HARARE – The MDC Alliance’s chief election agent Morgen Komichi was arrested on Thursday and charged with disrupting the announcement of Presidential Election results on August 2.

Komichi is set to appear before a court on Saturday, having spent Thursday and Friday night in jail.

The MDC official was detained although all paperwork required for one to appear in court was finalised early Friday morning, according to his lawyer Obey Shava.

Shava said some “dubious people” demanded to interview Komichi in secrecy but the lawyers refused before he was locked in police cells.

“The people were scary and looked like bogus police officers. We didn’t allow that because it’s against the law. An accused person can only be interviewed in the presence of his or her lawyers,” he said.

The charges stem from the events of the night of August 2, 2018, when during a break by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission in announcing Presidential Election results at the Rainbow Towers, Komichi went to the microphones and addressed the gathered reporters, declaring returns announced from nine provinces to be “fake.”

Komichi said: “I did not sign those results, so the results are fake. The results have just been printed and they have not been verified by the polling agents and we are the polling agents and we have not done that.

“We held a meeting today with the ZEC CEO and we agreed on the process and the process was not followed. Thank you very much, you have our position.”

Komichi is one of several senior MDC Alliance leaders who have been arrested in a nationwide crackdown on opposition supporters in the wake of disputed election results, which the party has challenged in court.

The opposition party says the charges are “trumped up” and “political”, with a heavy involvement of the military.

Komichi is charged under the Electoral Act Chapter 2:13.