Zimbabwe er ikke Egypten...

Police have arrested and tortured another dissident critic of president Robert Mugabe's regime as the government escalated a clampdown against a perceived plot to stage mass demonstrations against the leader, lawyers said late Monday.

Job Sikhala, the leader of a small offshoot of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change, was arrested on Friday in connection with an alleged plan to stage demonstrations like those in Egypt in a bid to overthrow the 87-year-old Mugabe, a statement from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said.

Sikhala had a dislocated pelvis following assault by police interrogators and had been denied medical treatment, the group said. He was allegedly being held in filthy and degrading conditions in a police station on Harare's outskirts.

After 31 years in power, observers say, Mugabe and the small coterie of supporters around him have ordered a countrywide operation to squash any signs of unrest they fear could spread from the turbulence in North Africa.

Earlier Monday, the organization said police had defied court orders to provide medical help to 12 activists accused of planning an uprising against Mugabe.

The dozen accused were part of a larger group of around 45 lawyers, students and trade unionists who were raided by police on February 19 during a private meeting on the situation in Egypt.

All now stand accused of treason, which carries the death penalty. They have been in custody for 10 days, and complained of various abuses and torture.

Western envoys here have denounced the charges as manifestly excessive.

The lawyers group said the charges against Sikhala had been changed from fraud to kidnapping and mobilizing people for revolt, and his case was being prosecuted by a police unit that had nothing to do with ordinary criminal prosecutions.

Lawyers filed an urgent application Monday for his release, saying there was no basis for his arrest and he was unlawfully detained.

Lawyers are also pressing for the release from two weeks in custody of Douglas Mwonzora, a lawyer and Movement for Democratic Change member of parliament who is also the co-chairman of the national committee to draft a new constitution. He and 23 others were arrested in eastern Zimbabwe where they were holding a rally. Mwonzora had not been tortured, the group said.