The Daily Telegraph’s Zimbabwe correspondent Peta Thorneycroft, cleared of all charges and freed after being imprisoned for five nights under the country’s new media laws, has returned to Harare to continue reporting. But her foreign editor Alec Russell has warned that other correspondents there, and the local press, can expect more harassment. Russell told Press Gazette: "Who knows what hoops the authorities are going to put up for the journalists to go through. It is a sign of the government’s intent, bumbling as the whole thing was, and a reminder of how tricky it is to be a journalist in Zimbabwe. I suspect there are more problems to come, not necessarily for Peta, but for the handful of other correspondents or more likely for local journalists."
Thorneycroft had been very resilient and brave while in prison, he said. She has said she will now sue the police for wrongful arrest and imprisonment.
Her ordeal began when she was arrested in a cafe in Chimanimani.
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The Daily Telegraph was in touch with the Foreign Office and the South African Government to get help with the Zimbabwean Government to free her.
By Jean Morgan
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