Film shows Zimbabwe vote rigged: report

LONDON (Reuters) - A film secretly taken by a Zimbabwe prison guard and smuggled out of the country shows the extent of the rigging that took place for the June 27 presidential run-off vote, the Guardian said on Saturday.

The film taken by Shepherd Yuda using a camera supplied by the newspaper shows prison staff being told by a war veteran how to fill in their ballot papers for Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, claimed a landslide victory in the vote in which there was no opponent and which outside observers said was neither free nor fair due to a campaign of violence and murder.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, withdrew from the run-off saying a fair vote was impossible because of the blatant attacks which he says have killed 103 of his supporters.

"I had never seen that kind of violence before," Yuda said in a video diary accompanying the clandestine filming. "How can a government that claimed to be democratically elected kill its people, murder its people, torture its people."

Yuda, 36, a prison guard for 13 years, has fled the country with his family in fear of his life.

"I don't regret doing this, although it is a painful decision I have taken," he said. "We can live without the memories of seeing dead bodies in the prison, dead bodies in the street, dead bodies in my family."

He said his uncle had been killed and his father beaten by gangs of thugs loyal to Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF.

"I've served this government for the past 13 years and was loyal to my government," the quietly-spoken Yuda said. "Unfortunately I didn't know that I was being loyal to a government that was not loyal to its people."  Continued...