Mugabe challenger is held by police

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who placed first in Zimbabwe's March elections and now faces a runoff with President Robert Mugabe, was detained by the police for nine hours Wednesday and charged with drawing a big crowd, his party said. He was released late in the evening.

"It makes absolutely no sense that a presidential candidate in an election is arrested for attracting crowds of people," the party said in a statement.

The party said Tsvangirai was charged under the Public Order and Security Act, and it called the charge "spurious."

Amnesty International condemned his detention as part of a "sharp and dangerous crackdown" that has included killings, torture and the intimidation of the political opposition and its supporters.

The opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, also said Wednesday that three people sleeping at one of its offices in Masvingo province were shot dead by unidentified militia members around midnight, bringing to 65 the number of its supporters killed since the March elections.

Opposition-party officials said Tsvangirai's detention and the latest murders were yet more evidence that prospects for a free and fair election in Zimbabwe were vanishing. This week the police blocked Tsvangirai from holding rallies, and soldiers reportedly have beaten people in rural areas who greeted him on his tour, party officials said.

Tsvangirai, who went into self-imposed exile after the election because of fears that he would be assassinated, returned to Zimbabwe 1 ½ weeks ago to campaign before the June 27 runoff.